Open the Pod Bay Doors: Recent Episodes

Innovation Bay

There is a lot of activity in the Australian startup ecosystem. Ideas, talent, and money are all flowing into this sector at an unprecedented rate.

This weekly podcast brings in-depth interviews with the best people making the biggest difference.

It's brought to you by Ian Gardiner and Phaedon Stough, technology entrepreneurs helping to grow the startup sector in Australia and New Zealand. Ian and Phaedon co-founded Innovation Bay with a clear mission to help technology entrepreneurs succeed.

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Join us for part 2 of our “studio on the road” at Sunrise, Blackbird’s annual festival of the startup ecosystem.

Armed with his roving podcast mic, Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and podcast host, Ian Gardiner, was lucky enough to tap the mind’s of some of Sunrise’s stellar speakers.

During this ep, you’ll hear from:

🌅 Karl Durrance, Stripe - discusses Stripe’s mission to increase the GDP of the internet, it’s broad customer base from startups to large enterprises, and the challenges and strategies in the financial infrustructure space.

🌅 Kate Mason, PhD - shares her career journey from Google ro founding her own firm, insights on effective communication and power dynamics, and details of her Sunrise talk about how confidence is actually unhelpful and authenticity is powerful!

🌅 John McDuling, Capital Brief - chats through the challenges and successes of launching a new media outlet, Capital Brief’s focus on the new Australian economy and providing valuable intelligence, and the subscription model and importance of quality journalism.

🌅 Maxine Minter, Co Ventures - discusses her solo GP fund, their focus on pre-seed investments and accelerating companies internationally, and some quality insights on what makes a successful founder and investor.

🌅 Kevin Jochelson, Upsize & Tech Rooport - shares his approach to helping startups scale and the importance of distribution, the impact of AI on startups, and winning the debate at Sunrise on whether investment success us nice skill than luck.

Tune in for many many more nuggets from the mind’s of this all star line up.

This podcast episode is brought to you by Vanta.

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A few weeks back Blackbird held their annual conference Sunrise - a festival and celebration of the the startup ecosystem in Australia; or as Ian describes it “real life LinkedIn”.

Our fearless Co-Founder, host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, and arguably one of the most connected humans in the ecosystem, Ian Gardiner, took the studio on the road.

Ian chatted to 9 incredible speakers who featured on Sunrise’s epic line up, to pick their brains on their area of expertise and the industry at large.

During part 1, you’ll hear from:

Adam Gilmour, Gilmour Space Technologies - discussing the challenges in the space industry, Gilmore Space’s upcoming first orbit launch and future plans including reusable rockets and lunar missions (SO COOL!)

Kristen Durham, Zendesk - about her recent promotion, the integration and future AI in Zendesk's customer support strategy.

Tova Angsuwat, Series Build (ex-Google) - about her transition from Google to founding Series Build, insights on effective recruitment strategies for startups, and the importance of diversity in startup teams.

Bronwen Clune, Capital Brief - on her background and shift to Capital Brief (one of the newest and fastest growing tech and innovation focused media outlets), about Capital Brief’s mission to cover the new economy, and the challenges and highlights in startup journalism.

It’s a mixed bag of brilliant minds, set against the backdrop of the electrifying hum of Sunrise 2024.

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Our guest for episode 176 is Clive Burcham, a highly influential, philanthropic and impact driven individual. Clive is one of the founding partners of Global Citizen, $46bn New York based juggernaut whose mission is to end extreme poverty. He is also the founder of what he terms a “side hustle” called Compadres, where he works with founders and CEOs to help them achieve "a better life, a better business, a better you".

From growing up in a beef and dairy farming family in regional West Australia, to jumping into TV at 15 and becoming a media executive at the age of 25, to moving to New York to run the Search for a Supermodel television show and working with leading advertising, design and branding agencies. Clive's life has been varied and rich with experiences.

Armed with a whole lot of technical knowledge from his time in NY, Clive moved back to Australia to undercut the local advertising industry to create better quality creative and content for clients. Taking his company from zero to hero in just 3 years, Clive sold a large stake to leading advertising holding company WPP, later buying it back to rebuild it.

With a penchant for giving, a captivating and wise mind, a values-led existence, and a heart of gold, Clive has founded and aligned himself with organisations that aim to make better and illuminate the human experience. “We’re put on this earth to make a difference to other people and to live in a community and be connected,” he says.

Tune in to learn of Clive’s fascinating journey, one we could all take a leaf from!

Quickfire Round:

Book: ‘Who Not How’, Dan Sullivan

Podcast: Your Move with Andy Stanley

News Source: Reuters

Productivity Tool: Calendar

CEO: Dan White, Luke Harris, Steven Marks

App: Instagram

TV Show: WeCrashed

TEDTalk Topic: How do we use our power to influence good

Get in touch with Clive at https://wearecompadres.com | and follow along on Instagram @wearecompadres

This episode is brought to you by Vanta.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is Leah Kaplan, APAC Sustainability Business Lead at Google Cloud. Leah’s passion for sustainability stems from her deep love of nature. Leah held a number of consulting technology roles before her dream job came up at Google Cloud - where she now sits at the nexus of technology and sustainability.

Sustainability has been a core value at Google for 25 years who are looking to minimise their impact on the planet while helping others to do the same. In 2007, Google became the first major company to become carbon neutral. In 2017 Google was the first company to achieve a 100% renewable energy match - this means purchasing renewable energy that covers all energy usage for all of Google which they’ve done every year since. Google has data centres running 24/7 solely on carbon free energy. One of their key goals by 2030 is to have every data centre around the world run on carbon free energy. Google is forecast to spend $10B on renewable energy this year alone!

As the whole world struggles with climate change, how do businesses begin to understand the impact climate change is going to have on them in the future? Leah’s role as Sustainability Business Lead for APAC at Google is fascinating and impactful, with an emphasis on encouraging and helping corporate customers to achieve their sustainability goals via the Google Cloud platform. There are myriad sustainability areas to focus on - not just gas emissions. These include water stewardship, waste reduction, circulatory in products, optimisation - all areas that technology can help with - particularly AI.

One of the pressures Leah observes with the customers she engages with is that many of those in younger generations are willing to pay more for products that are sustainably sourced and will show loyalty to brands that have a sustainability mission. Leah helps companies tackle these challenges by working with them to assess a measurement framework and benchmark, help them to become compliant against regulation, assist companies to make data-driven critical business decisions, guide them in optimising with what they do have, and help to seek out aligned sustainability growth opportunities. She also emphasises that companies with strong sustainability initiatives attract top talent.

This hugely educational and fascinating discussion cover so much more... take a listen.

Interested in learning more about how Google Cloud can assist you to reach sustainability goals? Head to Google Cloud’s website, sign up for free and receive $300 in credit, or reach out to your Google rep or Innovation Bay who will put you in touch.

Book: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen and Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

Podcast: The Energy Gang and Stuff You Should Know

News Source: The Guardian

Productivity Tool: Calendar and Kanban Board

CEO: Melanie Perkins, Canva

App: Signal

TV Show: The Wire

TEDTalk Topic: Geospatial analytics and its impact on sustainability

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is Bernadette Olivier, CEO & Co-Founder of The Volte - a groundbreaking peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace that's redefining the way we experience fashion globally. From its humble beginnings to its dazzling rise, The Volte seamlessly connects borrowers and lenders, while promoting a sustainable, circular economy.

Bernadette takes us through the evolution of The Volte, from its early days catering to fashionistas to its transformation into a platform embraced by mainstream consumers. She reflects on the complexities of remote work, the importance and challenges of strategic partnerships, and the challenges faced during the tumultuous times of COVID-19. The Volte not only weathered the COVID storm, but has since experienced remarkable growth in orders and active users.

She candidly reflects on the importance of trust, dedication, and alignment within a startup team, where she shares co-founder duties with four other women - Genevieve Hohnen, Kym Atkins and Jade Hirniak. From bootstrap beginnings to securing funding from Angels and VCs including eBay Ventures,The Volte defied the odds to become a trailblazer in the fashion rental industry.

Bernadette shares the uniqueness of The Volte's model - which is focused on occasion-based rentals rather than traditional subscriptions - as well as insights into the company's distinctive unit economics. From leveraging strategic investments, harnessing the power of AI for personalised customer experiences, and visions of international expansion into Europe, Bernadette paints a compelling picture for The Volte's future.

Quickfire Round

Book: 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan, 'Burn Book' by Kara Swisher

Podcast: Hard Fork, The Business of Fashion

News Source: New York Times

Productivity App: ClickUp

CEO: Anthony Eisen (Afterpay)

Favourite App: Calm

TV Show: 'Vanderpump Rules' and 'The Morning Show'

Movie: ‘Barbie’, ‘Oppenheimer’

TED Talk Topic: Changing consumption habits - moving from disposable, one-off usage to reusing, safekeeping and passing onto the next owner.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Proud Canberran and past North Carolina coleslaw wrestling competitor, Olympia Yarger is an incredibly resilient, dedicated, inspiring and super hands-on Founder & CEO of Goterra, a waste management technology company that uses autonomous robotic systems to process food waste using insects. The company enables a circular economy by creating agricultural commodities from the waste stream.

Goterra is paving the way for a circular economy by transforming waste into agricultural commodities, all while significantly reducing truck movement and processing costs. Learn about the remarkable environmental impact of Goterra's technology, which eliminates noxious gasses and slashes emissions by an impressive 97%.

Having spoken to her on the podcast 3 years ago, it was our pleasure to touch base with Olympia again on her fascinating journey from sheep farmer to maggot farmer, the incredible growth Goterra has had over the past 3 years while being incredibly efficient with the capital they have raised (just $20M since 2019) all with a laser focus on Goterra's mission to redefine waste management for a more sustainable future.

On the topic of mental health, Olympia has been working from home more frequently to limit distractions and, after a tough year personally in 2023, has made a commitment to ride her horse at least 5 times a week. As part of Innovation Bay’s Summit community, Olympia has had some of her most meaningful experiences at Summit events. Though it can be difficult to get to the events amongst the day to day commitments of running the business, each time she’s gone she mentions it refills the bucket and gains perspective from other founders doing the same thing.

Olympia and Ian also spend some time unravelling the State of Australian Startup Funding report, particularly around the pressing issues of gender inequality and diversity in the ecosystem that the report reveals. Olmypia says, “It’s disgusting and we should be ashamed.” She calls out that as an industry we shouldn’t be using any female founder as an example because the number of female founders receiving funding is still far too low and this needs to change. With deeptech, an even more polarising sector of the industry, Olympia adds: “The sheer limited number of women “making it” are an anomaly, not an attribute and we’ve got to change something.”

Quickfire Round:

Book: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Podcast: Agtech So What

News Source: Al-Jazeera

Productivity Tool: Notion

CEO: Tom Loeffler or Keaton Okkonen

App: Instagram

TV Show: Yellowstone, Vikings

TEDTalk Topic: What building climate tech means

Connect with Olympia Yarger and visit https://goterra.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest for episode 172 is Tom Amos, CEO and Co-Founder of Sidekicker - a platform that matches thousands of businesses to pre-qualified temporary staff.

During this chat, Tom reflects on Sidekicker's journey from the genesis of the idea as sparked by 'The 4-Hour Workweek', through to the milestone of turning over a million dollars in a month. Tom's journey is not just about business but also about building a culture where caring for each other is at the core.

Sidekicker has been backed with $40million in funding, the initial amount of $100,000 primarily from Seek Investments. They have not only disrupted the market but have also become a vital player in the space. Sidekicker work with around 2,000 customers per year, ranging from small catering companies to large organisations like Australia Post.

From the nuts and bolts of Sidekicker to the broader landscape of business and innovation, Tom offers valuable insights into:

the future of work
the role of AI - sharing how Sidekicker innovatively uses AI for data automation, matching engines, and award compliance
the potential challenges the economy may face in the next 24 months

Quickfire Round:

Book: 'The Year of the Locust'

Podcast: 'No Laying Up', 'Acquired'

News Source: Twitter

Productivity Tool: ChatGPT

Favorite CEO: Elon Musk

App: Uber

TV shows: ‘Slow Horses’, ‘Boys Swallows Universe’

TEDTalk Topic: Golf OR How to kick a standard career away and begin a startup without technical experience

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is James Bowe, the Co-Founder of OwnHome alongside Tim Harley. With shelter as a fundamental human need, OwnHome aims to transform access to homeownership in Australia, allowing aspirational homeowners to enter the property market without a 20% deposit, helping them get there for just 2% upfront.

With enviable and impressive resumes and backgrounds across consulting and consumer tech with the likes of Bain & Company, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Macquarie, Wise Ltd, and Herbert Smith Freehills between them, James and Tim were driven to start OwnHome after reflecting on some of the biggest challenges they personally face (financial security being at the top of the pile) and how they want to spend the brief period of time they have left on this planet.

After participating in Commonwealth Bank’s accelerator program from overseas, working their day jobs during UK day time and the accelerator program from 10pm - 4am, they finished in the top spot for the accelerator and received $150,000 funding. Now armed with little to no excuses to jump into OwnHome full time, the pair returned to Australia, and raised their seed round while in hotel quarantine in Sydney. Own Home has since received backing from Entrez, Global Founders Capital, Square Peg, and Commonwealth Bank's X15 Ventures and recently raised $31 million in their series A round.

OwnHome combines technology and human services for a seamless experience. Through OwnHome, aspiring homeowners can wave goodbye to renting forever and forgo intergenerational support as the only avenue to owning a home. Their offer allows those with just 2% deposit on the home value access to a licensed buyer’s agent, split loan structures, choice of home loan and comprehensive support through the process. Over the past two and a half years, they have received well over 20,000 applications and supported 50 families in becoming homeowners. Across the next 12 months, OwnHome aspired to support $500 million of property purchases in the next 12 months.

Quickfire Round

Book: Amp It Up!, Frank Slootman & Black Belt, Joseph Healy
Podcast: All-In
Newsource: The Economist, Twitter
App: Twitter
Productivity Tool: Siri
CEO: Jeff Bezos
TV Show: Succession
TEDTalk Topic: Solving the challenges of housing affordability in Australia

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Human beings have an innate need to belong to a group or tribe. Large parts of our brain are dedicated to engaging and interacting with others. Belonging triggers the release of chemicals in our brain that promote trust, empathy, and social bonding. Building belonging is essential in a fractured world and requires understanding and addressing our default setting.

During this very special episode recorded during the Innovation Bay panel at SXSW Sydney's inaugural event in October 2023, an all star panel featuring Phil Morle (Main Sequence Ventures), Jenny Li (Scarlare Partners), Joel Connelly (Blackbird), and Skye Riggs (Ripple Opportunities) join moderator and guest Open The Pod Bay Doors host, Cameron Webb (Innovation Bay) to share insights on how to build belonging at speed and scale. They share strategies for welcoming new members and creating meaningful connections that keep people engaged over the long term.

This episode is proudly brought to you by propodcast.com.au

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Our guest this week is Dan Sturrock, Investment Director at Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). With a decade of experience at ARENA, Dan has witnessed the organisation's remarkable evolution and growth. As an ARENA board observer representative, he provides invaluable insights into the exciting work of propelling startups towards solving colossal challenges - companies like Sundrive and RayGen, who are making huge strides in the solar energy sector.

ARENA's mandate is to accelerate decarbonisation with a focus on renewable energy. By providing grant funding for groundbreaking projects in renewable energy, energy storage, and electric vehicles, they are taking the battle against climate change to a whole new level. The monumental task of decarbonisation requires an all-encompassing approach across various sectors, and both the government and corporate giants are stepping up to the plate. ARENA's core focus is reducing risks and igniting innovation in renewable energy generation.

The fourth installment of the Innovation Bay & ARENA Renewables Startup Showcase for 2023 happens next week on Wednesday 1 November at Melbourne’s Cargo Hall. This event brings together 100+ of the country's leading angel investor, VC, PE and CVC community. Get ready to be blown away by four of the most remarkable founder pitches from the renewables, cleantech, and climatetech sectors. It's not just an event; it's a spark for networking and an education in the latest developments in the renewable startup universe. This year's stars include Renewable Metals, Hysata, Sicona, and Novalith.

Tickets are limited and available now https://innovationbay.com/event/arena-november/

Quickfire Round:

Book: Love Stories, Trent Dalton
Podcast: Positive Climate
News Source: New York Times
Productivity Tool: turning off notifications and avoiding distractions
Favourite CEO: Allan Moss, Nick Moore
Favourite App: Spotify
TV Show: Alone Australia
TEDTalk Topic: Alternative approaches to creativity in children and challenging some of the accepted paradigms around education

Connect with Dan Sturrock via LinkedIn or email.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cath Rogers is a Partner at Antler, a global fund with 900 portfolio companies, have dealt with 5,600 founders, with $4 billion in total portfolio value, working across 27 locations. Cath’s career trajectory showcases an interesting and diverse path into the venture capital industry.

Starting in a Goldman Sachs venture-backed startup in London in the very early 2000’s during the original dot-com boom, bubble and bust. She later worked in investment banking and strategy consulting before moving into venture capital. Cath spent three years in Abu Dhabi, working in a sovereign wealth fund focused on global cleantech VC - her foray into VC investing.

Upon returning to Australia in 2011/2012, Cath had a stint in Private Equity. After leaving to start her own business, she crossed paths with Daniel Petre and was offered to join him at a fund he was starting up - Airtree. Here she gained valuable mentorship and firsthand experience in early-stage VC before taking a period of time to raise her children - after which she joined Antler, the world’s day zero fund. Antler’s approach to due diligence is unique whereby they observe founders over a 12-week period. The VC firm aims to institutionalise early-stage venture capital and provide founders with a near-term path to capital.

Among so much more, Ian and Cath discuss, how the path to becoming a VC is now incredibly diverse, how the fundraising environment for VC funds has become more challenging, how investors are more cautious and have higher expectations in terms of risk appetite and exits, that quality funds and founders can still find capital, and how VC funds offer attractive returns compared to traditional investments.

Quickfire:

Book: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Podcast: Pivot - Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway, Serial

News Source: Axios, Capital Brief

App: Blinkist

Productivity App: Tactic, Calendly, Motion, Asana

Favourite CEO: Warren Buffett, Kate Morris (Adore Beauty)

TV Show: The Bureau (SBS)

TEDTalk Topic: What children learn at school and how that positions them for creativity, innovation and adaptation to the world.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s podcast episode features our special guest harrison.ai, CEO and Co-Founder, Aengus Tran.

harrison.ai started with the problem statement of healthcare capacity. According to Aengus, one of the biggest problems of our time is how to look after such a huge population with increased health needs. harrison.ai is looking to scale the global capacity of healthcare by building automation with AI systems and providing clinicians with superpowers of scale. Aengus says, "of all the things being done in in healthcare, scale will be the solution of quality healthcare globally."

After moving to Australia from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Aengus was one of very few Vietnamese students at an English-speaking Australian school so quite quickly had to learn the English language. After school Aengus went on to study medicine at university after advice from none other than Paul Ramsay of Ramsay Healthcare - a company that has gone on to invest in harrison.ai.

While working through his medical degree, Aengus realised how much in terms of scale was missing from medicine. During his final years of training, Aengus was involved in a research project building technology along with Vertex Health to select human embryo; opening his eyes to the capabilities of AI systems and how they can scale.

After starting out in Australia and New Zealand, harrison.ai’s radiology arm is regulated with FDA clearance in 38 countries with 1 million live touches and one in four radiologists using their technology in Australia alone. Their north star is to touch 1 million lives per day with their technology. harrison.ai has gone on to raise $US120M in series A and series B with investments from Skip Capital, Blackbird, Horizon Ventures and specialist, strategic, corporate investors Sonic Healthcare and Ramsay Healthcare.

Quickfire Round:

Book: Prediction Machines, The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb

Podcast: Lex Fridman on YouTube

News Source: Medium, mainstream news

App: VS Code, Rise

Productivity Tool: very basic reminders app and keeping notes, Slack

Favourite CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

TV Show: House

TEDTalk Topic: The health equality and impact that is possible through the scalability of AI

harrison.ai are continuously hiring in their AI teams. If you'd like to learn more or are you're curious about the tool, reach out to harrison.ai.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is Max Cunningham, CEO of FCX. FCX is Australia’s only end-to-end registry, capital raising and trading platform for private companies whose aim is to make owning and transacting private company shares simpler.

Max is an industry veteran. From his early career experiences to the development of a groundbreaking technology platform, Max's story is one of passion, expertise, and innovation. His LinkedIn profile is short, though his tenures have been long held - spending approximately 10 years each at Macquarie, Goldman Sachs, and the ASX before developing and launching FCX.

Max takes us on a journey through the realms of public and private markets, shedding light on the fundamental differences and the rapid growth of private markets in Australia. He explains how FCX was born out of the need for simplifying ownership of private company shares and the revolutionary concept of regularly trading private company shares.

With a firm belief in the FCX ecosystem, Max outlines the platform's unique features and its ability to provide instant atomic settlement, granting companies immediate access to capital. He delves into FCX's vision of creating a secondary market for privately listed tech companies, offering liquidity to staff, early investors, and shareholders.

Plus so much more…

Quickfire Round

Book: Arafat: The Biography, by Andrew Gowers and Tony Walker

Podcast: Unholy: Two Jews on the News

News Source: New York Times

App: RunKeeper

Productivity Tool: Empiraa

CEO: Yuval Rooz, Digital Asset

TV Show: Succession

TEDTalk Topic: Tokenisation of capital markets

Check out FCX https://fcx.com.au/

And get in touch with max@fcx.com.au or josh@fcx.com.au to find out more.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s special guest is Silvija Martincevic, CEO & Board Director of Deputy. Silvija is a passionate advocate for purpose-driven companies and brings a wealth of experience to Deputy from her background in socially responsible investing and previous roles at Groupon.

Deputy, founded over a decade ago, is a leading company specialising in smart scheduling and workforce management. Their software solution is used by over 1.3 million shift workers in more than 100 countries, empowering 330,000 businesses with tools for compliance and communication.

Silvija's journey from Croatia to the United States, combined with her experience in socially responsible investing, has shaped her leadership approach. She aims to take Deputy to new heights by creating a more flexible and transparent workplace for hourly workers.

Deputy's mission is to become a global platform for hourly workers, providing technology solutions to increase productivity and engagement. Despite the significant number of hourly workers in the world, there is a lack of tailored technology tools for them. Deputy is addressing this gap, currently serving over 1.5 million hourly workers and 330,000 workplaces.

Silvija's insights on responsible scaling, company culture, and bridging the gap between employers and hourly workers are valuable for understanding Deputy's approach. Their focus on diversity and exploration of AI to improve workforce management and customer support are also noteworthy.

Quickfire Round:

Book: Leading Lightly by Jody Michael
Podcast: Pivot with tech journalist Kara Swisher and NYU Professor Scott Galloway
News Source: Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Fortune, CNN, Buzzfeed, The Australian
App: Spotify
CEO: Alison Deans
Productivity Tool: WhatsApp
TV Show: Working: What We Do All Day (Barack Obama)
TEDTalk Topic: Resilience and grit

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s very special episode was recorded at our recent full community event. The Globe, hosted by Macquarie, brought together our four communities of early and later stage founders and CEOs, VCs and angel investors, to connect, learn, discuss and shape the future of our industry.

Ian sat down with five of our incredible members for this all star line up featuring:

Yash Varma, Founder & Partner, Empress Capital (Aurora & Horizon member)
Phil Morle, Partner, Main Sequence (Aurora member)
Georgia Barkell, Managing Partner, Sprint Ventures (Aurora member)
Lisa Vincent, CEO & Founder, HowToo (Summit member)
Alon Greenspan, Partner, Mind Ventures (Aurora member)
Cameron Webb, SVP of Member Experience and Managing Partner, Innovation Bay (Innovation Bay team)

With the taste of celebratory champagne at our cocktail party on their lips, Ian and our members discuss (among plenty more):

Their own background, progressions and evolution in the ecosystem
Some of the recent challenges they’ve faced
Their pulse on the current market and focuses in their respective roles
Their experiences and takeaways from this year’s incredible The Globe event
The benefits and why being a part of the Innovation Bay community is awesome

For more information on our events, or to apply for membership, visit innovationbay.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

E163 - Clément Aglietta, Co-Founder & CEO, Edda

Our guest this week is Clément Aglietta, Co-Founder & CEO of Edda, a collaborative tool for private equity investors. Edda is an all-in-one solution for deal flow, portfolio management, and LP’s relationship management. The tool is designed to be user-centric and integrates with external databases and other tools. Edda has recently launched into the ANZ market via a partnership with Innovation Bay’s VC community, Aurora.

Clément began his career at CERN, the biggest physics laboratory in Europe, where he learned about quantum physics. He then went on to study design. This gave him the opportunity to join the dots between physics and design and discover a new method of solving problems - a passion that led to the creation of Edda.

Clément’s desire to be an entrepreneur led him to attend conferences and meet investors. He worked at Rebag, a luxury handbag marketplace, and was later invited to join LG Labs as a VC. As a designer turned VC, he noticed the lack of advanced technology in the industry and decided to create Edda. Edda raised the first funding round after building a team and creating the first version of the product.

Edda helps investors manage their deals and portfolio companies by capturing information from emails, synchronizing data, and providing collaboration tools. It provides statistics and creates profiles for companies, while allowing users visibility on the true value of investments and the impact they create, in real time. With a team of 33 (growing to 40 imminently), Edda now has 130 clients in 26 countries and manages around $30 billion in assets across the private and public equity markets. With lofty ambitions to be the global industry leader, and a passion to make a positive impact on people, society and the planet, Edda has big plans for the future.

Quickfire Round:

Book: Build by Tony Fidel, Civilizations by Laurent Binet

Podcast: audio books

News Source: VC news via LinkedIn

Productivity App: Turning off phone notifications

Favourite CEO: Demis Hassabis from DeepMind

TV Show: n/a

TEDTalk Topic: Financing impact

Get in touch with Clèment via LinkedIn and learn more about Edda here https://edda.co/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is Fintech expert Alan Tsen, Head of fmX, IAG’s corporate accelerator program.

Currently in the middle of its fifth season, fmX invites 8 startup companies per cohort to engage in a 12 week program giving participants a unique opportunity to learn how to infiltrate their product successfully into the insurtech ecosystem.

Across the entirely free program, participants gain hugely valuable knowledge through training and face to face workshops to learn how to structure and position their businesses while giving them access to internal technical and design outlets to explore insurance use cases. One unique element of fmX is the potential for startups to partner with IAG.

With an enviable resume which includes practicing international tax law, a tenure as the GM of Stone & Chalk Melbourne, Chair and board member of Fintech Australia and Director of Revenue for startup Chipper Cash, Alan is also a lover of fine wine, even studying to become a sommelier, and writes a hugely knowledgeable Fintech newsletter Fintech Radar.

Quickfire Round

Book: Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara
Podcast: Got Somme - Aussie wine podcast
News Source: Twitter
App: Tana, Oura
Tech CEO: Andy Grove
TV Show: Ru Paul’s Drag Race
TEDTalk Topic: The State of Fintech in Africa

While recruitment for the next season of fmX won’t officially kick off until October this year, Alan is always on the lookout for startups with amazing ideas that might fit the fmX mould. Get in touch with Alan alan.tsen@iag.com.au or follow along on Twitter @alantsen.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know that dogs get cancer at the highest rate of any mammal in the world? Or that 80% of dogs get dental disease? How about that 50% of cats and dogs are overweight or obese? Pretty startling statistics, right?

Well, Anna Podolsky, Founder & CEO of direct to customer pet wellness business, Lyka, is on a mission to make our furry friends healthier and live longer, more fulfilled lives. Named after Anna’s 14 year old border collie, the concept for the business was borne when Lyka showed signs of being unwell and, after not recognising any of the ingredients in her generic food, began cooking for her fur baby.

Lyka employs 160 staff - doubling almost every 6 months - each with a deep love and care for animals. The company has so far raised $40 million in funds and has created 15 million meals for their loyal and very sticky customer base of furry friends and pet parents.

Ian and Anna cover a range of topics including:

Building the foundations for business success as a management consultant at Bain
Traveling around the world with a border collie
Practicing 10 thousand hours of gymnastics
Her Dad’s kitchen as first production facility
The importance of building a purpose-led culture

And lots more…

Quickfire Round:

Book: The Power of Moments - Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Podcast: Masters of Scale

News Source: Morning Brew

App: Headspace

Tech CEO: Bob Iger

Productivity Tool: Remember The Milk

TV Show: The Block (guilty pleasure)

TED Talk Topic: Kibble is the new cigarette

Get In Touch:

Lyka are always recruiting, check out their open roles: https://lyka.com.au/careers

Have a pup and ready to make the switch? Head to: https://lyka.com.au/

Connect with Anna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-podolsky/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is Anuj Goel, Head of Technology Sector and Executive Director at Macquarie Capital.

Anuj joined Macquarie’s Technology, Media, Entertainment and Telecommunications (TMET) team in 2006 following a short period working as an actuarial consultant.

Today, Anuj focuses on helping Technology companies with M&A, IPO, trade sales, capital raising and other strategic priorities. In addition, Anuj is actively involved in Macquarie’s principal investing activities having been involved with companies such as Seek, oOh!media, PEXA and Temple & Webster. Leading a team of 22 staff across advisory and investment, some days Anuj will be solving complex problems with a large ASX company - the next - helping a Series A company think about their growth and investments.

Anuj and his team have a broad technology coverage across online businesses, classifieds, FinTech and software, and are building capabilities in emerging sectors like AgTech.

Ian and Anuj discuss a number of topics including:

Macroeconomics and a potential continuation of a flat economy
Trends in the tech debt market and how corporates are going after growth
The difference between VC and PE and the relationship between them
Pre-planning for the IPO market
Investment opportunities in AI

And so much more!

Quickfire Round:

Book: Total Recall - Arnold Schwarzenegger Biography

Podcast: Alan Watts on YouTube

News Source: Letter of Intent, AFR

App: YouTube, Outlook

Tech CEO: all CEOs bring different things, Shemara Wikramanayake (Chief Executive Officer of Macquarie Group) is inspirational.

Productivity App: n/a

TV: Carl Pilkington

Ted Talk: How do you find your purpose?

Learn more about Macquarie Capital HERE

Connect with Anuj Goel HERE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

E158 - Adam Schwab, CEO and Co-Founder at Luxury Escapes

Adam Scwhab runs at a million miles an hour - literally, he runs barefoot marathons! The CEO and Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes, Adam Schwab is our guest this week.

Outside of running one of the country’s most successful, bespoke travel sites, and running really far without shoes, Adam is also a contributing journalist and writer, podcast host, father of two young children, is on the investment committee of Save The Children, and is an angel investor.

An ex-lawyer, Adam and Luxury Escapes co-founding partner Jeremy Same (an ex-banker), started their first business in 2004 - apartment accommodation for backpackers. Fast forward to 2023, Luxury Escape has 510 staff on its books across Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Brazil, Ukraine, and New Zealand and will turn over close to $1b this year.

Ian and Adam discuss a heap including:

Taking asymmetric risks
How COVID affected the business and helped them pivot their product offering
That every great founder balances incredible self confidence with consistent paranoia
His podcast From Zero

And so much more.

Quickfire Round

Book: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Podcast: Pivot, What The Flux

News Source: AFR, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg

App: BOM

Tech CEO: Jeff Bezos

Productivity Tool: WhatsApp

TV Show/Movie: WeWork, Super Pumped, The Crown - fact based fiction

Ted Talk Topic: n/a

Luxury Escapes are always hiring and Adam’s DM’s are open. Hit him up on Twitter.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

E157 James Petrie, CEO & Co-Founder, Nourish

There’s a shift happening in the food that we eat. That is, we’re seeing a transition to plant based food. According to Bloomberg, the plant based food industry is projected to hit $162 billion in the next decade. With a projected population of 10 billion people on earth by 2080, it will be impossible to feed that many mouths with animal-based proteins. Enter Nourish.

Our guest this week is James Petrie, the CEO & Co-Founder of Nourish. Cutting his teeth as a research scientist at CSIRO, James was part of the lipid engineering team, and responsible for one product that mimicked fish oil - all from a canola crop. These learnings inspired the formation of Nourish.

Though not a trivial exercise to make plant-based proteins delicious, Nourish is responsible for the production of fats that have made a breakthrough in the taste and experience of alternative proteins. Nourish engineer yeasts and fungal streams that behave in the same way as animal fats - and taste just as good!

During this chat, Ian and James cover:

How the growth opportunity lying with carnivores
James’s founder story and the transitional changes that come with moving from early to late stage in a startup
Nourish’s raising journey to date
The monolithic size of the market
The importance of demonstrating tangible customer traction to investors

Plus so much more…

Quickfire Round

Book: Stephen Webb - If the universe is teeming with life, where is everybody
Podcast: Gaming podcasts - Min-Max
News Course: ABC, AFR
App: Slack
Tech CEO: not one specific person but James respects those who make the journey from startup through scale up and beyond stating “the start of the journey is very different to the middle is very different to the late stages”
Productivity Tool: Miro
TV Show: Death In Paradise
Ted Talk Topic: How to make food real using the right ingredients / Transitions from early to late stage in startups

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our first guest of 2023 is Adam Theobald, CoFounder & CEO of Ordermentum, a double sided marketplace and platform for hospitality suppliers and venues to make orders and payments.

Despite a potentially promising career in cricket and a desire to become a physio, Adam studied Computer Science at university going on to complete a Master degree in Commerce. Beginning his career as a stockbroker focusing on technology stocks, Adam moved into roles with voiceover IP company Freshtell (comparable to Skype) and web-based video conferencing company Parkslide (akin to Zoom). With a love of coffee, Adam founded order ahead app Beat The Queue (since rebranded to Hey You who have recently merged with delivery app Yello).

Ordermentum was born in 2014 with 10 customers signed up - the first being Lion Nathan. Despite the COVID curveball that threatened to all but completely wipe out the entire hospitality industry, the company became a savior to locked down dog walkers ordering coffees.

Ordermentum now boast a hugely profitable business that caters to 35,000 venues (or half of the venues in the country), have 650 suppliers signed up, move over $1billion in G&V and process $4million in payments.

Ian and Adam cover topics including:

Raises (one of which occurred during the pandemic!)
Cricket (of course)
Why he supports in-office in a remote moving world
The importance of noticing emotional burnout in staff
Plans to double his workforce in the next 12 months
The network effect
How important being part of a community is - Adam is a member of Innovation Bay’s Summit (Series A+ Founder Community)
And so much more…

Quickfire Round

Book: Radical Focus, Christina R. Wodtke + Working Backwards (Amazon)
Podcast: Serial
News Source: Sydney Morning Herald
App: Hey You
Tech CEO: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Productivity Tool: Woop
TV Show: Yellowstone, Line Of Duty
Ted Talk Topic: Ability to think on three trajectories - running the right balance between a short, medium and long term success trajectory

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement.

Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise.

Part 3 features an admirable group of people including Flavia Tata Nardini (Fleet Space Technologies), Andy Tsao (Silicon Valley Bank), Matthew Pearson (Fleet Space Technologies & Airspeeder), Lucy Wark (Normal), Tim Moore (Investor), Matt Allen (Tractor Ventures), Alex McCauley (Tech Council of Australia).

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement.

Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise.

Part 2 features a bunch of incredible humans including Joel Connolly (Blackbird), Alex Apoifis (Blackbird), Jekaterina Viktorova (Syenta), Andrea Gardiner (Jelix), Damon Klotz (Culture Amp), Mick Liubinskas (Climate Salad), and Kate Glazebrook (Blackbird).

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement.

Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise.

Part 1 features a bevy of incredible humans including:

Matt Fairhurst (Skedulo)
Al Coleman (Folklore)
Kristen Durham (Zendesk)
Mary Minas (Sense of Self)
Mark Dombkins (Forever Projects)
Jason Neave (Punt Club)
Nan Ransohoff (Stripe)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest for episode 152 is Mina Radhakrishnan, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Proptech startup :Different. Mina co-founded the company alongside her husband, with whom she shares CEO duties. :Different is property management as a service for real estate agents with their mission being to take care of homes and the people in them.

Born in Canada, Mina has spent a lot of time in the US, kick starting her career at Goldman Sachs in New York. She chose a role as Product Manager at Google over Business School and was one of the first employees of Uber, where she went on to become Head of Product and was part of the team that introduced surge prices during busy periods. While running her consultancy on the side to keep close to product and startups, Mina worked with a couple of venture firms (Cowboy Venture and Redpoint) as an advisor and entrepreneur in residence. Through all of this wealth of experience, she knew she wanted to be a founder.

During a round the world trip, Mina and her husband came up with the idea for :Different. They raised their Seed round with Airtree - during the birth of their first child - launched publicly in 2017 and raised their B round last year (2021) - during the birth of their second child. :Different now manage tonnes of properties with efficiency and high quality via their customers that make up the likes of Ray White, LJ Hooker and many other top real estate agencies, and in doing so, have become one of Australia’s fastest growing agencies.

During her chat with Ian we learn about:

Her time on the board for Airtasker
Her advisory role with Antler
Her position on the board for Australian Tech Council - a lobby group working with gov to create 1.2 million tech jobs by 2030
Her founder journey and the double edged emotional rollercoaster of decision making
Her advice for founders and investors in the current and coming climate (Winter is coming - like it does every 3 years)
How much she values the written word

Quickfire Round:

Book: Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austin
Podcast: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (NPR News Podcast)
News Source: Twitter
App: Calm
Tech CEO: Mina doesn’t want to put anyone on a pedestal, everyone has something to learn
Productivity Tool: BarTender. BetterSnapTool
TV Show: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Ted Talk Topic: Power of the written word to persuade people

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Tanner is the Co-Founder and COO of Qwilr - an online platform that allows the customer to easily create visually compelling sales and marketing collateral at speed. The aim is to deliver a better buyer experience by combining content, price quotes, e-sign, and sales transactions into a single, mobile-friendly webpage. It’s the ultimate productivity boost for sales and marketing teams, with automation, analytics, code-free design and collaboration capability, all in one platform.

In this episode we hear about Mark’s passion for politics and study of History, Government & International Relations at Sydney University. How Google poached him from a startup to help launch Google Play Books, Google Play Magazines & Google Newsstand. Returning from a couple of years in New York we learn how reconnecting with old school friend Dylan Baskind led to the creation of Qwirl.

Ian and Mark discuss Qwilr’s journey and deep dive into Mark's expertise in sales and go-to-market plan. Tune in to hear more on:

Choosing a company name and re-branding
Founder-led sales, the importance of a sales team
Building and scaling your team
Fundraising process
International expansion
The hardest and best parts of building a startup

Quick fire round:

Book - ‘How Will You Measure Your Life’, Clayton Christensen
Podcast - Acquired
News Source - Twitter
App - Twitter
Tech CEO - Joe Thomas, Loom
Productivity Tool - Loom
TV Show - White Lotus
Ted Talk Topic - ‘The journey of sales’ or ‘wisdom on how to measure your life’

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WinVC is a women VC investor-led initiative aiming to facilitate the success of women VC investors and women-led VC firms, and attract more women from diverse backgrounds into VC investment roles. WinVC’s aim is to bring together women in VC to learn from one another, develop new opportunities, facilitate collaboration and help foster female talent in the industry.

On this week’s episode, our guests are WinVC’s incredible founders, Andrea Gardiner, CEO & Founder of Jelix Ventures; Ingrid Maes, Founder & Managing Director of W23; and Michelle Deaker, Founding Partner & Managing Director of OneVentures.

According to a recent report by Deloitte and SBE titled Accelerating women founders: The untapped investment opportunity, only 0.7% of all private start-up funding in FY22 went to solely female founding teams, despite funding increasing tenfold between FY18 and FY22. A separate AIC report highlights that just 25% of VC investors are female, with VC female partners sitting at 15%.

Andrea, Ingrid and Michelle have joined forces for WinVC to tackle the issue of diversity in VC head on. They firmly believe that diversity leads to better decision making and fund performance. And that having more diversity (ie women in VC) will lead to better investment decisions will being made which will help our startup ecosystem in Australia, in turn bolstering the county’s economy.

Quickfire Round:

Read - The Economist, Atomic Habits, Harvard Business School Website
Watch - The Power of the Ring, Blacklist, Extraordinary Attorney Woo

If you’re a woman in VC and are interested in membership, please head to the WinVC website (https://winvc.com/) to express your interest.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Weingarth is the CEO and founder of Slyp - a fintech startup and platform sitting between retail/merchant services and banking. The vision of Slyp is to completely reimagine what a receipt could be used for. Rather than a receipt being the end of a transaction, Slyp are developing a network allowing a relationship between the merchant, bank and customer to begin at the end of the transaction.

We hear about Paul’s study of agri economics at uni (where his nickname was Urban Cowboy), his first full time role at Equigroup, how he helped to set up the team at Microsoft Financing in Australia before moving over to PayPal in 2010. Deeply passionate about the customer experience, and now with an enviable resume of experience, Paul co-founded Slyp in 2016 alongside Spiro Rokos and Mike Boyd.

With just a prototype, Paul and Slyp were able to engage all four major Australian banks as both investors and current and future customers - the only Australian fintech to have done so. Slyp’s merchant list extends across almost all verticals with the likes of Chemist Warehouse, General Pants, JD Sports, Harris Farm and the Rockpool Group all on board.

Having raised $40mil, Slyp currently employs 50 staff with ambitions to have Slyp in the hands of 1 in 2 Australians by the middle of next year. The purpose-led company are also working on amplifying their sustainability by offering a recommerce space (reselling preloved items). Paul’s goal is to see Slyp as an Australian made global proposition, hoping to get offshore into the US, UK and European markets.

Quickfire Round:

Book: Good To Great by Jim Collins
Podcast: The Howie Games (Mark Howard)
News Source: LinkedIn, AFR
App: Milkrun
Tech CEO: Jeff Bezos
Productivity Tool: Outlook Mail app
TV Show: Billions, Super Pumped, WeCrashed
Ted Talk Topic: The ability to leverage game theory to drive network effects and innovation

Learn more about Slyp here & connect with Paul Weingarth via LinkedIn

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joining us for Episode 148 is the fascinating George Peppou, Founder and CEO of Vow Food, a cultivated meat company, founded and operated in Sydney. Vow is made up of a multidisciplinary team of scientists, technologists and designers, working together in the relentless pursuit of better food.

By making meat with animal cells, and not the animals themselves, Vow is creating the world's most tantalising and unique culinary experiences without compromising on ethics or our planet along the way.

Ian and George dive into George's career path so far, from studying Biochemistry and Immunobiology at Sydney University to Founder and CEO of Vow Food. Tune in to hear more on:

The effects of the meat industry and food production on the Global greenhouse gas emissions
How Vow as a product is produced and when it will first go to market
The investment and growth stages of Vow
Georges business and personal challenges

Quick fire round:

Book: Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell, By: Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
Podcast: Lex Fridman and The Constant
News Source: ABC/AFR for local news and The Atlantic
App: Vimcal - Lightning-fast calendar for remote work
Tech CEO: Elon Musk
TV Show: Jerrfey Dahmer on Netflix
Ted Talk: Woodwork and a mindfulness practice.

George is a member of Summit Community at Innovation Bay.

You can find more at VowFood.com, Twitter or Linkedin. Vow Food is hiring so be sure to keep an eye out on their careers page.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joining us for E147 is Angela Clark, Co Founder of Wallet Nation. Angela is a specialist in business transformation, customer experience, innovation and digital platforms. Angela’s experience spans multiple industries, customer segments and services, across education, media, payments and financial services.

Angela has previously led companies as a CEO and Managing Director, founded her own start-ups and led transformation of divisions and customer strategy within larger companies.

Tune in to hear Ian deep dive into Angela's fascinating career journey plus so much more as the pair cover off topics such as:

The transition from corporate to start up
Wallet Nation - How was it founded, where is it at currently and what is the vision
Crypto Winter and the evolution of blockchain and web3
The benefits of being apart of a community

Quickfire Round

Book - Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
News source - NY Times
Tech CEO - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia
Best productivity tool - Weeding tools for the garden
TV show - ESP News
Tedx talk - Importance of citizens taking active interest in media and how it affects society.

Angela is also an Innovation Bay member and part of the Canopy Community. You can reach Angela via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaclarkaustralia/?originalSubdomain=au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest for episode 146 is Australian politician Hon Ed Husic MP. Elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Chifley in 2010, Ed is currently serving as Minister for Industry and Science.

Passionate about the digital economy creating the jobs of the future, Ed has a long-standing interest in the impact of tech on our economy and community and his portfolio appointments and parliamentary interests have focused on this. For a number of years, he has been part of the Federal Opposition’s team developing policies to promote early stage and digital innovation.

In this episode, we dive into Ed's top priorities for policies within the startup ecosystem. Ian and Ed also touch on the Research and Development tax incentive, the positive impact migration and visas can have on growing the economy, as well as discuss politics in general plus the impact inflation and rising interest rates may have on small startups.

Tune in to hear more from Ed!

Quickfire Round
Book - System Error by Rob Reich and Starling Grad War by Antony Beevor.
Series - Narcos and Kenobi (Starwars)
TV Shows - The A Team
Gadget - New generation airpods

This is Ed's second time on the Open The Pod Bay Doors podcast. You can check out his first appearance here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a two year hiatus, Innovation Bay and ARENA teamed up once more for the ARENA Renewable Energy Founder Forum.

Across the course of the evening, four promising founders from a pool of 40 applications in the renewables space were invited to pitched their business to a room of experts and enthusiasts in the industry.

We heard from ARENA's Darren Miller, past alumni 5B’s Dr Nicole Kuepper-Russell and an expert panel, recorded the night, featured Renate Egan from the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, Kate Vidgen of Macquarie Group and Kristin Vaughan from Virescent Ventures.

Today we’re thrilled to share the panel discussion with you for this week’s episode. Across this educational and eye-opening conversation, Innovation Bay’s own Ian Gardiner alongside renewables experts Renate Egan, Kate Vidgen and Kristin Vaughan cover a range of topics.

We investigate the renewable energy industry shifts across the last 12-18 months, Australia’s evolution relative to other international markets in relation to EVs and hydrogen and where Australia is going to win within the emerging technology space. We also discuss how the world is recognising the need to globalise the supply chain, export opportunities for Australia’s energy commodity or IP and the increasing need for negative omissions.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louise Nobes is the founder of the Australian arm of 42 - a globally innovative software engineering and coding trade school. 42 is free to attend with entry criteria being that you must be 16 to attend and either undergo a strenuous 2 hour logic test (and pass) or a 4 week intensive bootcamp (and pass).

An ex-social worker, Louise is incredibly passionate about supporting underprivileged and underrepresented people. While teaching at Flinders NVI, Louise became fixated on wanting to push into work of the future and how it would look to bring in the best educational model that focused on coding and jobs - and one that was open to everyone. After looking up 42 on the advice of a colleague, Louise contacted the French headquarters to ask if she could become the Australia license holder. Within 24 hours they agreed.

Louise looks at everything with a lens focused on diversity and equality. She is driven by a desire to solve some of the really complex problems in society - one problem in particular being youth unemployment. Through 42, she’s also looking to squash some of the statistics currently running through the tech industry. Stats such as only 25% of people in the tech sector identify as female; the number for software engineering dwindling down to 12%. At 42, 30% of intake are women, 40% are neurodiverse and 28% did not finish grade 12, all proving that 42 is open to all.

Running for just over a year in Adelaide, 42 has seen 450 students pass through its ranks and move straight in employment via a red hot recruitment market. The learning philosophy is all practical without any theory with students working across around 200 projects during the course of their learning curriculum. With a long term goal of being first and front of mind for digital apprenticeships, Louise plans on setting up shop in Sydney as a second Australian market very soon with a goal of 1500 students through the door.

Quickfire Round

Book: Jacinda Ardern (I Know This To Be True): On kindness, empathy & strength

Podcast: The Game Changers

News Source: YouTube

App: Spotify

Tech CEO: Allison Nikula (CareApp)

Productivity Tool: My brain + team use Airtasker

TV Show: Peaky Blinders

Ted Talk Topic: What will it take to get equality in tech and are we prepared to really listen to what that is.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wayne Gerard wears a number of hats. By day, he is the Co-Founder & CEO of RedEye and the current Queensland Chief Entrepreneur. He lives on a working farm outside of Brisbane, is a trail runner and is deeply passionate about innovation, entrepreneurship, the climate, helping others and making a difference with the time we have!

Wayne spent 10 years in the ARMY straight out of school, first as a tactical communications officer and later with a key role to build the ARMY’s first drone. This opportunity led to a job offer with Boeing, then a Queensland tech company (Lincom) before starting his own consultancy company. Following a devastating flood that affected his property in 2011, Wayne reevaluated his position, wanting to move away from being the product of his business.

During a trip to the US, Wayne came up with an idea for a SaaS business - a single instance multi tenant cloud as a solution for engineering companies. RedEye was born with BHP the very first customer. Fast forward 10 years and Wayne has taken up position as Queensland Chief Entrepreneur - a position he will hold until the end of 2022.

His key focus priorities in this role include:

To help the existing industry to be as sustainable and successful as possible by partnering with QLD innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers
To build the next emerging industry and new economy
To focus on regional - entrepreneurship and innovation can happen anywhere, from Longreach to Gladstone or Cairns
To unlock partnerships with the Brisbane 2032 Olympics

During their chat, Ian and Wayne cover a range of topics, all highlighting Wayne’s desire to make a difference and help others - particularly those in the innovation and entrepreneurship space. One of the key takeaways: Resilience is learnt as you go on your journey. Know you’re not alone. It’s hard work but keep going. What you’re doing is going to make a difference!

QUICKFIRE ROUND

Book: Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair
Podcast: Rich Roll, The A16Z Podcast
News Source: tries not to focus on the news - prefers to focus on customers
App: Garmin, Strava - for trail running
Fav Tech CEO: Elon Musk
Productivity Tool: Redeye
TV Show: The Terminal List
Ted Talk Topic: Building resilient economies for innovation

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joining us for E142 are Katie Heathcote, Associate Director Technology - Export Services for Investment NSW and Ryan Edwards-Pritchard, CEO and Founder of Fintech company Cape.Katie’s role at Investment NSW sees her meet hustle with NSW tech companies that are at the right stage to scale globally. Investment NSW provides advice and mentoring to companies into which markets they should select to scale into, with one of Katie’s role responsibilities to ramp up exports for NSW. Investment NSW also has a department specialising in export assistance grants, an MVP team that focuses on the local ecosystem and helps companies get to the point of scaling and a tech precincts team that offers rental and subsidies among so much more.Ryan is the CEO and Founder of Cape, an expense management platform that will work with businesses to spend smarter, reduce wasteful spending and grow their business. Cape are currently in the closed beta phase of their timeline, having onboarded their first 34 customers and are about to move into the open beta phase with a public launch to happen at the end of the year. Cape currently employ a team of 25 predominantly across Sydney and other parts of Australia and around in the UK. They recently raised $30mil with a focus on a warehouse facility in Sydney - where the physical cards will be created - and an equity component - essentially where credit is coming from.Ian dives into Katie and Ryan’s chance meeting, how Katie has assisted Ryan with the success of Cape and also covers:* Investment NSW’s areas of focus which include Fintech, Cyber, Blockchain, Smart Cities, GreenTech, EdTech, AdTech, HealthTech * Differences between the tech ecosystems in Australia and the UK * Human and financial capital * The importance of Australian startups thinking global from the get go * Scottish ties

Quickfire Round * Book: Katie - Sally Rooney, Normal People | Ryan - Homer’s Iliad * Podcast: Katie - Bankless, 11FS | Ryan - Lex Freeman * News Source: Katie - Reddit, Financial Times | Ryan - AFR, The Australian, The Economist, National Geographic * App: Katie - Spotify | Ryan - Headspace * Tech CEO: Katie - Sarah Biller | Ryan - Mike Cannon-Brookes * Productivity Tool: Katie - Monday | Ryan - Trello * TV Show: Katie - Toast of Tinseltown, Obi-Wan Kenobi * Recent Movie: Ryan - Top Gun * Ted Talk Topic: Katie - Music on the brain and mental health | Ryan - Marine conservation

Just last month (June) Innovation Bay spent 3 days and 3 nights in Noosa, Queensland with over 100 of the country’s leading VCs for our VC community Aurora’s annual cornerstone event, Venture Downunder (VDU). After a learning day full to the brim with panels, discussions, keynotes and serendipitous conversations, we took the opportunity to sit down with three of the most illustrious and active VCs in the ecosystem right now to take a snapshot in time of the current state of affairs of our industry and to catch their thoughts, concerns and what they’re most excited about right now.Joining Ian, around a small bar table in a quiet backroom, were:* Karen Chan, Portfolio Manager, Perennial Partners * John Henderson, General Partner, Airtree Ventures * Stew Glynn, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, TEN13

During VDU, Macquarie's Head of Wealth Management Investment Strategy, Jason Todd, provided attendees with an incredibly insightful, if not at times concerning, view into the current state of play. We took the podcast group’s pulse on the keynote and how they see macroeconomics affecting the industry with Karen, John and Stew all wary but nevertheless optimistic about the industry at large. There was agreement that while there will be compressions throughout the market, innovation is here to stay, deals are still happening and the very best founders will continue to raise at impressive prices. We were reminded that in the last downturn companies like Slack, WhatsApp, and Groupon were born, and that this vintage could very well yield similar strong returns with the most resilient of companies pushing through.As VDU is an event to bring the Innovation Bay VC community together, the panel discusses the importance of community. Being brought together in a structured and unstructured way to learn from one another or chat “around the watercooler” is vital in this market. VCs are collaborative by nature but there is always an element of natural competition underlying. We also cover what everyone is most optimistic about - from Web3 to strong deal flow to investing in emerging markets like Africa, Latin America and Indonesia.We also had a chance for a couple of Quickfire Recommendations:Karen - Podcast: All-In PodcastJohn - Podcast: Invest Like The Best - Jeremy Grantham EpisodeStew - Podcast: 20VC - Quick Commerce EpisodeIan - Book: Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker

Dr Julio Ribeiro is the Founder and CEO of Inventia Life Science, a deeptech, biotechnology company. Inventia build instruments for the 3D printing of biomaterials (literal living human cells) to print 3D structures or models of tumors with an ultimate aim to accelerate the drug discovery process and speed up medical research.The impact Julio and Inventia are looking to have is life-changing. To date, the pharmaceuticals industry has spent billions of dollars in research. According to Julio, 90% of drug trials fail. Inventia’s technology reduces the pipeline of unsuccessful drugs, speeding up the process of getting those that do work onto the market.Inventia have to date raised $35million with the likes of Blackbird, Skipp Capital, Main Sequence and angels as investors. Most of the Big Pharma companies already utilise the technology, with labs all across the world and a global waitlist eager to use the technology. The current funds and next few years will see Inventia exploring the market and scaling up, increasing their production facilities, and expanding their sales force in US and Europe and team globally.Quickfire Round Book: Carl Yeung - Memories, Dreams and ReflectionsPodcast: The EconomistNews Source: YouTube, French 24 ChannelTech CEO: Jamsetji TataProductivity Tool: Confluence, JiraApp: WhatsApp, YouTubeTV Show: Life is a movie - doesn’t watch TV or moviesTed Talk Topic: What we can do to improve medical research with the right balance between regulations and safety.Inventia Life Science are on the lookout for talent in the fields of biology, software engineering and always welcome interns. Head to https://inventia.life/ for more information.

IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY! Today, Innovation Bay’s Open The Pod Bay Doors turns 5! To celebrate, we’ve taken it way back to our very first guest. Daniel Petre is the Godfather of the ecosystem and has arguably been around longer and had more success than anyone else in the sector. In 2014, Daniel founded Airtree alongside Craig Blair but a year ago, made the move out of VC and into the philanthropy space.Daniel felt the need to step away from VC for a number of reasons - to make way for the next generation to shine, the business model of VC started to lose it’s shine for where he wanted to focus his energies, and he became a grandfather - a milestone that has seen him appreciate so clearly how short life is.His move into philanthropy was initially driven by his time working with Bill Gates in the US whose mother’s greatest value has resonated with Daniel over the years - that if you’ve been fortunate in life, it’s your responsibility to give back, not your choice. Inspired, Daniel has founded StartupGiving - a concierge of sorts with a goal to inspire founders and tech execs (with upwards of $20m net wealth) to start up their own charitable foundations - to give back.During their chat on this very special anniversary podcast, Ian and Daniel cover:* The transformation of the ecosystem since 2016 (including the positive impact both the ESVCLP Legislation and Canva have had on the industry at large) * The most important sectors in the industry - Web3, AI, computer vision, the metaverse (though he’s not hugely excited about it), drug discovery and creation using AI * How Australia needs to dramatically increase research funding * That there is no reason we shouldn’t be a renewable superpower, and that we shouldn’t close minds to small scale nuclear, and * Daniel lends some incredible insight into current market conditions

Quickfire Round:* Book: 'Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World' by Anand Giridharadas * Podcast: Open The Pod Bay Doors, Sam Harris’ ‘Making Sense’ * News Source: The Economist * Tech CEO: Impact over last 5 years - Elon Musk, Melanie Perkins (Canva) - will go down as one of the greatest tech CEOs of our time * TV Show: The Liar, (new version of) The Staircase, Ozark

Darren Miller is the CEO of Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) - whose purpose it is to support the transition to net zero emissions by accelerating the pace of pre-commercial innovation.Darren is deeply committed to net zero and improving our chances on planet earth. He believes we have all the technologies we need between now and 2030 - from solar, wind, lithium batteries, electric vehicles, rooftop solar, and household energy management - and if we can deploy these things at scale quickly in the economy, we’ll overshoot what we need to do by 2030 in order to reach net zero.ARENA does this by utilising federal funding to invest and support renewable energy startups and projects for the Australian economy. ARENA and Innovation Bay have teamed up for the third year running for the ARENA Renewable Energy Founder Forum on 28 July. The event showcases Australia's most exciting early stage renewable technology startups and pairs them with Australia's leading venture capitalists and angel investors - to supercharge their growth through funding, connections, and advice.Founders in the renewable space are encouraged to pitch to apply (closing 31 May). Applicants will be considered from a broad scope including technology, software digitisation, and consumer behaviour - essentially anyone working on the transition. He states that trillions of dollars needs to be invested in this space and that we need the best people working on the problem. If this sounds like you, jump on and apply to pitch here https://bit.ly/ARENAapps.Mini Quickfire Round* Book: The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson * Podcast: Rewired (ARENA podcast) * App: Snap Send Solve * Founder: Michael Liebreich * TV Show: Insiders

Connect with Darren Miller:https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenhmillerhttps://twitter.com/darrenhmiller

Anthony Zaccaria is the Co-Founder of Linktree which is essentially a category creator for link in bio tools and a one-stop place to house entire online link ecosystems. In just 6 years, Linktree has gathered a massive global following with a user base of 24 million people - or the population of Australia (!!) - generating 1.2 billion Linktree visits per month. Earlier this year, Linktree reached unicorn status, with a $1.3 billion USD valuation following a $110 million USD raise.Anthony co-founded Linktree with his brother Alex Zacarria and mutual mate Nick Humphries in 2016. The company now employs 265 people across 12 countries and is growing rapidly. The model for Linktree is simple - in fact the prototype was built in 6 hours - the idea originating from their marketing business Bolster. While running marketing campaigns they thought there had to be a better way to consolidate all client links (think website, social media, Spotify etc) in one place. Linktree has since become a website replacement for many people, its simplicity solving the one link in bio issue of Instagram. It has been adopted by over 200 user groups including creators, influencers, musicians, small businesses, global brands, charities and everything in between.With a rebrand imminent, Linktree’s growth across the next 12 months will see the launch of3 new product rollouts that will amplify integrations and partnerships and make the relationships between user and visitor closer. Anthony, who is also the father of 2 year old twins hasn’t stopped there. Alongside 6 others, he has recently launched investment syndicate Side Stage Ventures. The syndicate focuses on the early stage backing of companies at the intersection of tech, creativity and culture - companies that can have an impact on behaviour, a paradigm shift or step change in something. Their initial investments have seen them back Heaps Normal, Mr Yum, Delegate Connect, Tixel, QSIC and Alts.Anthony’s Quickfire Round:* Book: What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz * Podcast: Song Exploder * News Source: News app on phone * Tech CEO: Stewart Butterfield (Slack) * App: Sonos, beta version of Linktree, baby monitoring app * Productivity Tool: Notion, Slack * TV Show: Euphoria * Ted Talk Topic: How managing artists translates into building a business

Get in touch with Anthonyhttps://linktr.ee/anzac

Dale Brett is the Co-Founder & CEO at Fl0 - a low code platform for software engineers. Founded just a year ago (in 2021), Fl0 raised $11.5 million in its seed round with funding from the likes of Blackbird, Skip Capital and Jelix. Fl0’s vision is to empower software developers and engineers to be 20 times faster and more efficient.Prior to Fl0, Dale founded payment startup, Tapify, which, after only 12 months, received acquisition offers too good to refuse. As a part of Tapify’s acquisition, they were able to found Willow, a digital twin company that integrates real assets like stadiums and rail networks, analysing their data to help them optimise and run more efficiently. Dale has exited in the running of the business but continues to sit on the board for Willow.Fl0 is a remote first company, employing 22 staff across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Colorado, Vancouver and Europe. The company has been named “Canva for software engineers”. Its low code platform offers building blocks and tools to empower engineers and developers to do their best word. Even with a small team, a startup or tech can go from an idea to live in no time with scalable infrastructure to support. With the LA superbowl stadium as one of their customers, Fl0’s market is vast with a key objective for the platform to engage a global stage. They want every team who are thinking about building a product to think about building it on Fl0.A jiu jitsu novice, gaming tragic and ambitious chess master, Dale and Ian cover a range of topics in this great episode.Quickfire Round* Book: Turn The Ship Around * Podcast: Flow State * News Source: curated RSS feed - TechCrunch, blogs etc * Tech CEO: Elon Musk * App: Safari - because of Li Chess * Productivity Tool: Motion * TV Show: WeCrashed (the story of WeWork) * Ted Talk Topic: Alternative teas to coffee for the mind - ie Lions Mane, Cacao Tea, Reishi

Get in touch with Dale:www.fl0.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalebrett/

Laura is the CEO and Founder of SafeStack Academy, a community-centric online education platform on a mission to give software developers, analysts and architects all of the skills they need to build secure internet software.Laura entered the workforce at 16 after telling quite a few lies to become an apprentice software developer for EDS. She put herself through her qualifications to get to university and night school and then went back to do her degree in her early 20s. During 2005/2006 she took a year out to work for Cern in Geneva before taking up a post for British Intelligence. After a number of years working in counterterrorism and counter online harm, Laura took a trip to NZ for 6 weeks and never left - 11 years later, she holds a passport and has 2 small kiwi children.Fascinated with how fast software was being built, Laura found a niche seeing that security wasn't adapting to this speed. With a newborn in tow, she took a leap and after winning a couple of high growth NZ clients, began her startup at the same time co-authoring a book - Agile Application Security.SafeStack began as a consultancy, embedded with software development teams but quickly moved towards being a training company. When COVID hit they lost 94% of revenue overnight. The pandemic was the catalyst to take SafeStack from a service business to a software business. The company breeds diversity; its superpower as Laura admits. 70% of SafeStack Academy’s team and 100% of the board identify as female. They see diversity as a strength, hiring from different backgrounds, countries of origin, languages, religions, sexuality and gender. Its youngest employee is 23 and oldest is 59. Laura lives by the philosophy that every day is a school day and that you should share your failures.Quickfire Round:* Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear / How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings * Podcast: Risky Biz * News Source: more international news than local - takes a little bit from here and there * Tech CEO: HashiCorp - Aaron Badger * App: New York Times Puzzle App, Freeflow - things that can turn off brain * Productivity Tool: Miro, Asana * TV Show: fantasy with a good story that takes you on an adventure and outside your world * Ted Talk: Restoring vintage sewing machines / Teach everyone to be a little less well behaved - breaking the rules helps you defend.

Allegra Spender, currently running as an independent candidate for the Senate seat of Wentworth in Sydney’s east, is daughter to Italian immigrant parents - her father a barrister, politician and diplomat, her mother a renowned Australian fashion designer, the late Carla Zampatti.Allegra was Head Girl at Ascham School graduating with a HR score of 99.95 and went on to study Economics at the University of Cambridge in England. Her first job out of uni was as a consultant with McKinsey which she reflects was a great place to learn the trade of consulting and to think about business strategically, but Allegra wanted to use these tools for good and apply them to the social sector. Her ambition saw her work for the UK Treasury, in Kenya for a not-for-profit and as part of a huge teaching hospital.Upon returning to Australia in 2007, “the time was right” and Allegra was named Managing Director of Carla Zampatti, where she was able to apply her learned skills to this point back into the family business. Allegra successfully ran the business for 8 years, through the GFC and through it’s transformation to online. While Allegra stepped down as MD 5 years ago, she remains on the board of Carla Zampatti - one of Australia’s most successful fashion brands and the only Australian, family-led business that is transforming from one generation to another.Before her move into politics, Allegra was Chair of Sydney Renewable Power Company - an impact investment company that put 500kW of solar power on the roof of the Sydney Convention Centre - and the CEO of Australian Business Community Network which works with 47 leading businesses including Microsoft, Lend Lease and Optus, partnering them with approximately 200 low socio-economic schools matching student to real world mentors educating them on what’s possible and within their grasp.Allegra is deeply passionate about business, education, community and the environment - “a better climate for Wentworth” is her key policy. She’s an advocate for the tech and startup ecosystem, is a member of YPO and sees a strong tie and limitless opportunities between climate and tech - hoping to see Australia standing at the forefront of technology around climate.She is open, honest and transparent. Tune in to hear more!Quickfire RoundBook: Prepared: What Kids Need For A Fulfilled Life by Dianne TavennerPodcast: Harvard Business Review Podcast (HBR), Gund Institute, The Brookings Cafeteria, Education BookcastNews Source: Need to read things whether you agree with them or not, all online papers, The EconomistApp: Smiling MindsTech CEO: Scott Farquhar, AtlassianProductivity Tool: Trello, TeamsTV Show: The GameTed Talk: How business could be used in education to help kids to be ready for the world of work - make learning real.Connect with Allegra SpenderWebsite - https://www.allegraspender.com.au/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/allegra-spenderTwitter - https://twitter.com/spenderallegra

For the past 14 years, Tech23 has showcased and amplified the emerging deeptech talent coming out of Australia that have the potential to create new industries and smarter solutions. Tech23 is a national forum whereby 23 early stage companies are chosen to tell their story and speak about their innovation on stage to an audience of industry leaders, investors, potential enterprise customers and other up and coming founders.At the 2021 badge in November last year, Innovation Bay attended and flagged five of our favourites. In episode 133 of Open The Pod Bay Doors, we have invited these five companies to come onto the podcasts to tell us a bit about their business, their technology and what their future plans look like.The episode begins with Rachel Slattery, the mastermind behind Tech23, who explains a little about the forum’s history and purpose. We then go on to meet the incredible humans behind our chosen five companies from last year’s event.Josh Ismin is Co-Founder & CEO of Psylo - a psychedelic biotech business focusing on Psychedelic-inspired medicine to treat mental illness.Paula Burton is Co-Founder of Mass Dynamics - a company that has been helping global life scientists transform mass spectrometry data to knowledge since 2019 by integrating modern practices in business, software engineering, computational biology, machine intelligence, biostatics, product design and analytical chemistry.Warren McKenzie is the Managing Director and Ellen Gorissen is GM Commercial of HB11 - a company that aims to create a new source of clean, safe and reliable energy using laser technology to fuse Hydrogen and Boron-11.Steven Vassiloudis is the CEO and Founder of Novalith - a company that uses carbon dioxide to simply lithium chemicals refining for an electric era.Nancy Schellhorn is CEO and Founder of RapidAIM - a precision pest management tool for farmers to accurately pinpoint the location of pests in real time.Learn more & connect with our guests:Rachel Slattery - Tech23https://tech23.com.au/2021/https://au.linkedin.com/in/rachel-slattery-11209017?trk=public_post_share-update_actor-textJoshua Ismin - Psylohttps://psylo.bio/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-ismin/Paula Burton - Mass Dynamicshttps://www.massdynamics.com/https://au.linkedin.com/in/paulaburtonngovWarren McKenzie & Ellen Gorissen - HB11https://hb11.energy/https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-mckenzie-03b84614/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellengorissen/Steven Vassiloudis - Novalithhttps://www.novalith.com.au/https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenvassiloudis/?originalSubdomain=auNancy Schellhorn - RapidAIMhttps://rapidaim.io/https://au.linkedin.com/in/nancy-schel

Duncan Anderson, along with his two friends Jeremy Cox and Ben Sze, is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of EdTech company Edrolo. After some time working at Google, Duncan and his two business partners met while working at Goulburn and Sacs some 10 years ago. The original idea for Edrolo was as a two-sided marketplace - tutors on one side and students on the other - but quickly evolved into it’s earliest incarnation as somewhat of a YouTube for learning for VCE students.Fast forward to now, Edrolo employs approximately 200 staff, is in 1200 schools and services around 30,000 students across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and is backed by some of Australia’s biggest VC’s such as Airtree and Blackbird. It is a fully vertically integrated company - meaning they create all their own content, do all tech stack, sales and customer support in house.Duncan is driven by trying to make the world a better place through education. A self-confessed learning machine, Duncan’s mind ticks at a million miles an hour, soaking up everything in his path and seeing every challenge as an opportunity to learn. He subscribes to 300 podcasts and listens to them at 6 x speed, hasn’t missed a gym session in he can’t remember how long and is utterly obsessed with writing, without fail penning a blog every single Sunday over here at Cloud Streaks.Duncan and Ian cover a tonne including:- If you have a good product and can explain it well you’re setting yourself up for success.- How Duncan came to imbibe that the biggest risk is taking no risk.- If you want to help a mind grow you need time with that mind.- Somewhere between 70-90% of class time is influenced heavily by the textbook.- Habits are accumulated momentum.- Everything you do should be the best thing you’ve ever done.- You don’t learn anything from anyone you agree with.Quickfire Recommendations:- Book: Principles by Ray Delio- Podcast: New York Times The Daily- News Source: A diverse diet is the most important thing - not any single one news source. TechMe for tech, Ben Shapiro for politics, New - York Times, The Guardian, Sky News in Australia- Productivity Tool: Google Sheets for tracking time or timesheeting.- Favourite TV Show: The West Wing (all time), Brooklyn 99- Favourite App: Gmail, Owltail- Favourite Tech CEO: Elon Musk- Ted Talk topic: The power of writing as a way to improve metacognition and problem solving skillsFollow Duncan's blog: https://www.cloudstreaks.comContact: duncan@cloudstreaks.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/duncan-anderson-252b2b20/

E131 - Ben Thompson - Employment Hero

Ben Thompson is the Founder and CEO of Employment Hero. The company is Australia’s newest unicorn, recently announcing a funding round of $181 million, valuing the firm at $1.25 billion. Ben grew up in Frenchs Forrest in Sydney and finished his schooling in Armidale, rural NSW. After finishing law and economics at uni, Ben took up a number of tenures in Australia including with Sydney Futures Exchange and Perpetual before jumping on a flight to London where he was employed by Interactive Investor International and ran theirs and lastminute.com’s IPO and then by UK’s largest property portal, Right Move. After a number of years in London working and playing hard in the excitement of the dot-com boom, Ben and his (now) wife married and moved back to Sydney to raise their family. Simultaneously, Ben decided he never wanted to work for anyone again and so started his own business. Employment Hero currently services 80,000 SME customers, managing 750,000 thousand employees. With 52% of the world’s GDP spent on wages within SME’s, Employment Hero’s audience is huge and growing as they work on big plans to expand.

Rebecca Schot-Guppy is the Director of Investment Leverage and Portfolio Management at IAG Firemark Ventures. Previously, Rebecca was the CEO of FinTech Australia, where she made a significant impact on the ecosystem. Prior to Fintech Australia, she worked as a Community Manager at Stone & Chalk. Rebecca found her way into the world of venture through her background in law and biomed. She is a passionate and knowledgeable member of the startup ecosystem with many insights to share.
Ian & Rebecca discuss…- Rebecca’s path into the startup world- Why Rebecca chose to work on the venture side of the startup ecosystem- Rebecca’s role and impact at FinTech Australia- Australia as a Fintech powerhouse- IAG Firemark Venture’s thematic investments- The growth of the the VC sector in Australia- The Firemark Collective and its teams..and more!
Quickfire Recommendations- Book: Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi- Podcast: 7am Podcast- News Source: AFR & The Guardian- App: Superhero- Productivity Tool: Asana- Favourite Tech CEO: Katherine McConnell - Brighte- Favourite TV show: Sports- Ted Talk Topic: Female leadership

Ian sits down with Hugo Bieber, Partner at Think & Grow, and Jacqui Tucker, Head of Employment, Taxes & Reward, Enterprise, KPMG, to discuss the 2021-2022 Australian Startup Salary Guide by Think & Grow and KPMG High Growth Ventures. Supported by Tech Council of Australia, the guide was produced with 20 leading VCs, surveying over 3,000 positions across 140 companies and is designed for startups looking to recruit and retain the best talent in the ecosystem. The panel discusses a variety of topics around recruiting, attracting, paying, rewarding, and motivating talent.Ian and panel discuss the guide in detail, including…* The need for the salary benchmarking guide within the startup ecosystem * Difference in salary ranges between early stage startups and later stage startups * The importance of transparency within the market * How ESOPs can be used for attraction and retention * The great resignation and what it means for Australian companies * The trend toward flexible work arrangements

...and more!Download the 2021-2022 Australian Startup Salary Guide here: Salary Guide (thinkandgrowinc.com)For more information on KPMG High Growth Ventures, check out their website: https://www.highgrowthventures.com.au/

Manuri Gunawardena is the Founder and CEO of HealthMatch. HealthMatch was founded in 2017, after Manuri won TechnCrunch’s Startup Battlefield. It is a Medtech platform built to help patients connect with clinical trials. It operates as a marketplace, allowing patients to have access to the latest treatments and trials.Manuri is an ambitious founder with an extensive medical background. She is the winner of the 2021 Bold Future Award by Veuve Clicquot and has been named as one of The Australians top 100 innovators of 2021. As a former medical student turned entrepreneur, Manuri is passionate about combining her medical experience and technology to deliver better healthcare.Ian & Manuri discuss a variety of topics, including…* The importance of patient accessibility to clinical trials * Empowering patients as drivers in healthcare * Manuri’s journey from medical student to entrepreneur * The impact the Covid-19 vaccine development had on the medical world * The consumer approach of HealthMatch * HealthMatch’s recent expansion to the United States

...and much more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz * Podcast: The Twenty Minute VC * News Source: Twitter, social media platforms * App: Instagram * Productivity Tool: Miro * Favourite Tech CEO: Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble) & Melanie Perkins (Canva) * Favourite TV Show: Succession * Ted Talk Topic: The shift that is happening in healthcare toward more empowered patients

HealthMatch is hiring! More info here.

Max Cunningham is currently the Group Executive of Listings at ASX. Previously, he was the Head of Equity Capital Markets at Goldman Sachs in New York and the Director of the Macquarie Group in London. Max has a wide array of global experience and provides unique insight into the state of the Australian market.
Max and Ian discuss many topics, including…* The emergence and growth of the tech sector in Australia * Tech becoming the largest sector for issuing secondary capital * Why some US companies choose to list in Australia * The potential future of work in Australia * Macro-trends that could positively impact the ecosystem * The importance of building community

...and much more!
Quickfire Recommendations* Book: Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson * Podcast: The Ideas Exchange Podcast, Conversations with People Who Hate Me * News Source: The New York Times * App: PhysiApp * Productivity Tool: “My wife” * Favourite Tech CEO: Richard White, WiseTech * Favourite TV Show: Ozark, Fauda * Ted Talk Topic: “The confluence of capital power and political power”

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. This week, we’re focusing on news stories centred around climate tech and renewable energy.
Meet this week's panel…* Mick Liubinskas, Climate Salad * Ali Cluines-Ross, Artesian

Topics we discuss: Australia's goal of net zero emissions by 2050, The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Grok Ventures becoming Australia’s first $1b VC fund to invest in climate tech, Loam Bio raising a $40m Series A with backing from Marc Benioff (TIME Ventures) and Mike Cannon-Brookes (Grok Ventures), Australian energy company Woodside partnering with US-based solar startup Heliogen, Square Peg backing waste reduction startup Zero Co in $6m raise, Bitcoin mining coming to Byron Bay with a data centre powered by renewable energy, and Atlassan’s new 40-storey HQ which will operate on renewable energy.
Additional information can be found below:* https://www.climatesalad.com/ * https://events.humanitix.com/climate-salad-showcase-2021 * https://www.globalclimatelandscape.org/

Steve Fanale is the CEO and Founder of DriveYello, a company that helps businesses provide last mile delivery service to their customers. DriveYello’s mission is becoming the smartest gig economy management platform. Steve has been an active member of the startup ecosystem since the early 2000s, before it was fully established in Australia. Steve’s story of founding and building DriveYello is one of tenacity, resilience, talent, and leadership. He is an open and passionate founder, who shares a variety of insights around his experience.Steve and Ian discuss...* What Steve learned during his time as a professional sportsman * Steve’s varied career history and how it led him to where he is today * How the idea of DriveYello came to be in 2014 * The gig economy in Australia and how gig economy businesses operate and scale * How DriveYello was able to enable businesses to survive during Covid-19 lockdowns * Steve’s experience as a Summit member and how it has provided him support * What is next for DriveYello

...and much more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: Fanocracy by David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott * Podcast: The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway * News Source: Listening to podcasts and news and doing an investigation to validate * App: Stake (investment app), Apple Fitness * Productivity Tool: Trainual * Favourite Tech CEO: Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquhar, Atlassian * Favourite TV Show: Ted Lasso * Ted Talk Topic: “the mental health of startup CEOs”

Nicky Jackson is the founder and CEO of RangeMe, a product discovery and sourcing platform that allows retailers and suppliers to connect. RangeMe owns and dominates within the United States market, where they currently have 200,000 active suppliers and 10,000 retail buyers in their network. RangeMe works with over 75% of leading US-based retailers.Nicky has spent several years working for large multinational companies, bringing brands to market. RangeMe was founded in 2013 after Nicky developed her own skincare range and found it difficult to get a foot in the door at major retailers. She recognised this pain point and sought to create a platform that could seamlessly connect retailers and brands to one another. Nicky’s story is an amazing one of tenacity, hustle, product focus, and team culture.Ian and Nicky discussed a broad range of topics, including…* The challenge of securing funding for RangeMe prior to the existence of a thriving startup ecosystem * The story of RangeMe’s acquisition and why they decided to go forward with it * Why RangeMe expanded to the US with a base in San Francisco * How RangeMe built an efficient team and established an effective team culture * The growth of the Australian startup ecosystem since RangeMe was founded * RangeMe’s current focus on globalising the platform

...and much more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: The Happiest Man of Earth by Eddie Jaku OAM * Podcast: How I Built This * News Source: Family group chat, LinkedIn, SMH * App: Smiling Mind, Spotify, Peloton app * Productivity Tool: Slack * Favourite Tech CEO: David Shein, Our Innovation Fund * Favourite TV Show: Looking for recommendations * Ted Talk Topic: “the power of going global and expansion” or “the fear of failure”

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...* Matt Allen, Tractor Ventures * Andrea Kowalski, Tidal Ventures

Topics we discuss: The Global Startup Genome Report, Clearco tapping into the Australian e-commerce boom, early stage venture capital fund Tidal Ventures launching Tidal’s Expert Network, new Sydney VC fund Black Nova, the Iconic teaming up with circular economy provider Airrobe, Lawpath’s recent $7.5m raise, Kate Morris & Justin Ryan joining together in a new private equity venture: Glow Capital Partners, and several recent raises in Fintech.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...* John Henderson, AirTree Ventures * Stew Glynn, TEN13

Topics we discuss: Christian Porter resigning as Industry Minister, Immutable securing $82 million in funding, Canva raising $200 million at a $40 billion valuation, Microsoft acquiring Brisbane-based Clipchamp, BNPL platform Scalapay becoming a unicorn, Delegate Connect’s $10 million seed round, Insurtech Open raising $31 million in a series B, and Startmate proposing a change to startup investment rules.

Alex McCauley is the Founder and Executive Director of Tech Council of Australia. Previously, he was the Founding CEO of StartupAUS, which recently morphed into Tech Council of Australia. Prior to joining StartupAUS, Alex worked as a Diplomat for the Australian government in Israel. Alex is an intelligent and dynamic founder who is passionate about technology and the startup ecosystem. He has a wide range of knowledge on policy, technology, innovation, advocacy, and more!Ian & Alex discussed several topics including…* The growth of the Australian startup sector * Alex’s experience over the past 6 years as CEO of StartupAUS * Why StartupAUS is becoming Tech Council of Australia * The process of establishing the Tech Council team * The release of The Crossroads Report * Alex’s experience at Stanford and how it will benefit him going forward * What Alex hopes Tech Council will achieve

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: Masters of Rome Series by Colleen McCullough * Podcast: Reply All * News Source: The Economist * Productivity Tool: TripIt * App: WhatsApp * Favourite Tech CEO: Steve Jobs (Apple) & Elon Musk (Tesla) * Favourite TV Show: The West Wing * Ted Talk Topic: “The role consumers have in solving climate change”

For more information about Tech Council of Australia, visit https://techcouncil.com.au/.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...* Lauren Capelin, Startmate * Michael Batko, Startmate * Alex Scandurra, ex-Stone & Chalk

Topics we discuss: Alex Scandurra stepping down as CEO at Stone & Chalk, Startmate's plan to build an "Innovation City," we get the inside line from our host Ian about Jelix Ventures doing their first $17m close, AfterWork Ventures closing a $10m fund, Canva ranking #3 in the Forbes Cloud 100, the transition of StartupAUS to the Tech Council, Bendigo acquiring Melbourne-based fintech Ferocia for $116m, Latitude acquiring lending fintech Symple for $200m, the 2021 Mid-Year Global CVC Report, & Kevin Rudd joining the advisory board of Crimson Education.

Ben Pfisterer is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zeller, an alternative to business banking. Prior to founding Zeller, Ben was the country manager for Square in Australia. Zeller was founded in early 2020 and has seen massive growth since then, with several rounds of capital raises and a team of 100. Zeller is just getting started, with sights on becoming a multigenerational business that changes the landscape of the Australian payments industry and expands globally. Ben is an ambitious, fast-moving, and highly capable founder with many insights to share.Ian sits down with Ben to discuss…* A high-level view of the payments industry * How Zeller raised a large amount of money in a short period of time * Why each employee should be part-owner of the business * Square’s recent acquisition of Afterpay * The growth of the Buy Now, Pay Later sector * How resilience played a role in Ben’s journey * The mental health pressures that many Founders experience

...and much more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari * Podcast: The Dropout, How I Built This, The Dollop * News Source: AFR, The Age, The Australian, Techcrunch * Tech CEO: Mike Starkey (Athena) * App: YR (Weather app) * Productivity Tool: Slack, Figma * TV Show: Loki, Silicon Valley * Ted Talk Topic: “Resilience and the difficulties faced when founding a startup”

Zeller is hiring! Check out available opportunities.

Sam Kroonenburg is the CEO and Founder of A Cloud Guru, a disruptive online learning platform for cloud certification and training. A Cloud Guru has recently been acquired by Pluralsight, a US company, in the largest-ever acquisition of an Australian software company. The story of A Cloud Guru is an amazing example of product-market fit and successfully getting the product into the hands of the customers who need it most.Sam has an extensive background in software development; he spent years at Microsoft as a Software Design Engineer. Sam also spent time honing his software development skills at Kiandra IT, where he worked as a Software Development Lead and a Software Development Manager.During their chat, Ian & Sam discuss…* Sam’s extensive background in software development * Working in an ever-changing industry * Engaging customers through education * The natural progression of adding B2B services * The process of negotiations that led to the acquisition by Pluralsight * The unique set of challenges A Cloud Guru faced in raising funds and hiring * Creating consistency through shared values among employees

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari * Podcast: Lex Fridman podcast * News source: Ars Technica, The Age, The Washington Post, WSJ * Tech CEO: Elon Musk (Tesla) * App: Calm * Productivity tool: Superhuman Email * TV show: The West Wing * Ted Talk Topic: “The future of education and work” or “the biggest and most exciting ideas in physics”

Joined by Paul Naphtali (Rampersand), Sarah Nolet (Tenacious Ventures), and Rachel Yang (Giant Leap), Ian sits down for a deep dive into family offices. The panel discusses a variety of topics related to family offices and provides a wealth of information for potential VC investors as well as those looking to learn more about who is behind VC funds.Ian & the panel discuss…* The role family offices play in Australia and how it is evolving * How family offices can help innovation become a core part of the Australian economy * The differences between a family office and an individual * The intergenerational nature of family offices * Deal flow as a determinant of success in first-time funds * The importance of ESG (environmental, social, governance) * Trends among family offices

...and more!

Ashik Ahmed is the Co-Founder, CEO, and CTO of Deputy, a workforce management software platform. Deputy seeks to simplify shift work for hundreds of thousands of customers around the globe. Ashik is a genuine, open, and honest CEO with a multitude of insights on the founder journey.Ashik is back on Open the Pod Bay Doors to discuss…* The difficulties Deputy faced during the pandemic and how they overcame them * How Deputy adapted to place more of a focus on the healthcare industry * Deputy’s recent rebranding and how it came to be * The concept of “clocked-in for the customer” * The startup landscape in Australia and how COVID-19 has impacted it * How he is largely driven by courage & compassion

...and much more!Quickfire Recommendations Books: Shoe Dog* by Phil Knight * Podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show * New Source: Facebook video * App: WiZ App * Favourite Tech CEO: Jeff Bezos (Amazon) * Productivity Tool: Screen time on iPhone, turning notifications off * TV Show: The Playbook * Ted Talk Topic: “Being selfless and owning that selflessness”

___________Deputy is hiring! Check out open roles here: https://www.deputy.com/careers

Shoe Dog

Lauren Hall is the Founder and CEO of iVvy, a venue and event management software company. Prior to founding iVvy, Lauren worked across a variety of industries including clothing, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, and technology. Lauren is a tenacious founder with an indomitable spirit; her story is one of talent, hustle, resilience, and success.Lauren & Ian discuss a wide array of topics including…* How Taekwondo impacts several areas of Lauren’s business and life * Growing up in South Africa and how it sparked Lauren’s desire to immigrate to Australia * The process of healing post tragedy and trauma * Lauren’s introduction into the events industry and how iVvy came to be * How Lauren successfully led iVvy through COVID * The ways in which COVID has impacted the events industry * Preparation for iVvy’s upcoming IPO * The existence of hybrid events and the future of the events industry

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations: Book: Scale or Fail* by Allison Maslan * Podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience * Tech CEO: Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquhar (Atlassian) * App: Slack * Productivity Tool: Monday.com * TV Show: Bloomberg, Dragons’ Den * Ted Talk Topic: “The courage, the resilience, and the endurance around delivering success within a person’s world and what it actually takes to be successful.”

Scale or Fail: How to Build Your Dream Team, Explode Your Growth, and Let Your Business Soar

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Tessa Court, IntelligenceBank * Danny Gilligan, Reinventure * Kevin Jochelson, The Tech Rooport

Topics we discuss:The discussion kicks off with the biggest headline of the fortnight: Square's $39 billion acquisition of AfterPay. The panel dives into the implications of the deal for the BNPL sector, and banking in general. We also discuss the new innovation hub opening up in the new Salesforce Tower in Sydney, Australia's first crypto credit card from CoinJar, the new $270 million VC fund from Airwallex, and new raises by IntelligenceBank and Culture Amp._______Subscribe to The Tech Rooport for a daily dose of headlines from the ANZ startup ecosystem.

Adam Boyle is the CEO of Newcastle-based Pegasus, a competency management software and services organisation. Adam joined Pegasus as a General Manager in 2007 and became CEO in 2010, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role. Pegasus was recently acquired by U.S. company Avetta; the deal was finalised last week after receiving regulatory approval.
During their chat, Ian & Adam discuss many topics including...* The transition of Pegasus from a labor hire company to a tech company * Pegasus’s recent acquisition by Avetta and how it came to be * The benefits and challenges of running a Newcastle-based tech organisation * Pegasus operating with a growth mindset * Managing the tension between sales and development * ...and more!

Quickfire Recommendations Book: The Next Elemen*t by Andy Allen * Podcast: How I Built This * News Source: The Newcastle Herald, AFR, The Australian * Favourite Tech CEO: Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) * Favourite App: HeyYou * Productivity Tool: Coffee * Favourite TV Show: Loki, The Footy Show * Ted Talk Topic: “How my broken leg at 22 became the means for me to change my life”

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Melissa Widner, Lighter Capital * Peter Dunne, Herbert Smith Freehills & Safety Culture * Barnaby Marshall, Icehouse Ventures

Topics we discuss:Our panel kicks off with a discussion of the recent call from leading Australian tech investors and founders for a plan to end the lockdown crisis and then transitions to talk about funds, raises, and acquisitions from the Australian and New Zealand startup ecosystem. Some major headlines we cover: new funds from ANZ, Tennis Australia, Our Innovation Fund, and Tractor Ventures and raises and exits by Go1, Rokt, Sweat, Invoice2go, and Employment Hero._______Horizon, Innovation Bay's angel investor community, is hosting a number of upcoming pitch events. Apply to pitch here.

James Ferguson is the CEO and co-founder of Immutable, a platform that provides scalable blockchain infrastructure for video games. James is a driven founder with a growth mindset that has led Immutable to build a staff of 100 and raise $20m. James and his brother/co-founder, Robbie Ferguson, have been featured on the ‘Forbes 30 under 30’ list for their impressive work in growing and scaling Immutable.Ian sits down with James to discuss…* His journey to founding Immutable * The process of recruiting a successful team * Building a team culture centred around a growth mindset * The gaming industry as a whole * Immutable operating in a carbon-neutral way * The history and future of NFTs

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations* Book: The Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin * Podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show * News Source: Stratechery by Ben Thompson, Matt Levine newsletter in Bloomberg * Tech CEO: Patrick Collison (Stripe) & Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX Exchange) * App: Deliveroo * Productivity Tool: Polymail (a tool to tackle email) * TV Show: Drive to Survive * Ted Talk Topic: “what it means for the world in 10 years if we have programmable immutable digital assets”

Immutable is hiring! Check out the open roles here.

Matthew Koertge, Managing Director of Telstra Ventures, is an unsung hero of the Venture Capital industry with a portfolio including 78 investments, 28 liquidity events, 12 unicorns, and a staff of 19 globally. He is a passionate and dynamic advocate for the startup industry, where he has been active since 1998. Prior to starting at Telstra Ventures in 2011, Matthew worked across a variety of industries including positions at Accede Capital Venture Partners, Deutsche Bank, Macquarie Group, and Fujitsu.In his chat with Ian, Matthew discusses:* The GP LP structure of Telstra Ventures and why it works * Telstra Ventures operating as a thematic investor * The Telstra customer network and why it is an asset for Telstra Ventures * The growth of the Australian startup ecosystem over the past 10 years * The existence and future of secondary markets * Australia’s venture capital market in comparison to other countries globally

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations: Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, & Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar. * Podcast: 20 Minute VC & Pivot * News Source: TechCrunch, Business Insider, Wall Street Journey, & AFR * Tech CEO: George Kurtz of CrowdStrike * App: LinkedIn & Apple Music * Productivity Tool: Telstra Ventures data science tools * Favourite TV Show: Westworld * Ted Talk topic: “*Aligning incentives between management and investors”

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Holly Cardew, Carted * Hugh Stevens, Galileo Ventures

Topics we discuss:Our panel discusses how border closures and lockdowns are holding back Australian startups, as well as recent raises by Gilmour Space, Fl0, Skedulo, and Currus Biologics. We also touch on Wise's debut on the London Stock Exchange and Nextdoor's SPAC.__________________Horizon is Innovation Bay's community of passionate, experienced angel investors. Horizon has a number of pitch opportunities for startups coming up this October. For the opportunity to connect 1-on-1 with an impactful group of angel investors, apply to pitch here.

Federico Collarte is the co-founder and CEO of Baraja, a rapidly growing startup creating LiDAR technology for self-driving cars. Baraja recently closed a $40m Series B, is scaling globally, and is quickly approaching a headcount of 200. Prior to co-founding Baraja, Federico worked in product development and systems engineering, with experience spanning the industrialisation of high volume telecommunication devices at Finisar, to the end-to-end systems engineering of an implantable hearing solution at Cochlear.In this chat with Phaedon, Federico discusses:* The ins and outs of Baraja's most recent raise * Advice for founders who are fundraising * Balancing the urgency of hiring with finding the right person * Lessons from building out overseas teams * Creating a culture that attracts problem solvers * Managing the co-founder relationship

...and more!Quickfire Recommendations: Book: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne & The Hard Thing About Hard Things* by Ben Horowitz * Podcast: Lex Fridman Podcast & The Joe Rogan Experience * News source: The Information & TechCrunch * Tech CEO: Elon Musk * Productivity tool: Daylio * Ted Talk topic: Resilience vs. Going All In

_____________Baraja is hiring! And so are many other fast-growing Australian tech companies. Find the hottest jobs in #startupaus on Innovation Bay's new job board.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

From the Earth to the Moon (Illustrated 1874 Edition): 100th Anniversary Collection

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...* Elicia McDonald, Airtree Ventures * John Croll, Truescope

Topics we discuss:Ian and the panel discuss the new Sydney lockdown, why Andreessen Horowitz is getting into publishing, a new early-stage fund, confusingly called "The Fund" is launched in Australia. Plus a few juicy deal announcements and some good news for employers with technology jobs being added to the government's visa list. Plus much more.
__________________

KPMG High Growth Ventures surveyed 120 Australian startup founders about their satisfaction, work-life balance & future outlook. The report uncovers important insights into the state of founder health & wellbeing in Australia. Download the report here.

Darren Miller is the CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Darren Miller has more than 25 years’ experience across a range of sectors including renewable energy, electricity retail, technology, finance, media and entertainment. Prior to joining ARENA Darren was the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Power, an innovative electricity retailer.In this conversation with Phaedon about Australia's renewable energy future, Darren discusses:* ARENA’s investment track record * The future role of hydrogen in Australia’s energy infrastructure * The rise of electric vehicles and the challenges of the charging network * How startups contribute to the energy system

ARENA is co-hosting the upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Forum with Innovation Bay this October. This event brings together clean energy startups, investors and industry stakeholders, opening up future pathways to funding and partnerships. Pitch applications for the event close Friday 25 June. If your renewable energy startup is shaping Australia’s clean energy future, apply to pitch here.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Cheryl Mack, Stone & Chalk * Richard Lin, AirTree

This week our panel talks about some of the massive acquisitions and rounds recently raised in the Australian ecosystem, including the $2b acquisition of A Cloud Guru, the $1.7b acquisition of MessageMedia, and new funds from Tenacious Ventures and Investible....Our friends at KPMG High Growth Ventures just published their annual report about startup founder health and wellbeing. The founder journey can be physically, mentally and emotionally draining so it's so important to have data like this available so we can better understand how to support founders. View the report here.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Hannah Field, Folklore Ventures * Andrew Coppin, Farmbot

Topics we discuss:Our panel discusses the newest COVID lockdown in Victoria, Artesian's new report about the growth of Australian VC over the last decade, workplace comms startup Pyn's $8m seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (the firm's first Aussie investment), and what Anil Sabharwal, Google's Australia-based star product leader, is up to next.__________________Innovation Bay is hosting the Renewable Energy Founder Forum this October in partnership with ARENA. This forum provides a unique opportunity for renewable energy startups to pitch to the Australian investment community and key industry stakeholders. If your startup is shaping Australia's clean energy future, apply to pitch here.__________________KPMG High Growth Ventures surveyed 120 Australian startup founders about their satisfaction, work-life balance & future outlook. The report uncovers important insights into the state of founder health & wellbeing in Australia. Download the report here.

Andrew Nunn is Co-Founder, Chairman and Executive Director of JBS&G Australia—one of Australia’s largest privately-owned environmental consulting companies. Andrew also acts as Director for several companies focussed on property development, private equity investments, and entertainment opportunities. In partnership with his wife Alexandra Dimos, he founded the Nunn Dimos Foundation, a philanthropic fund focussed on supporting key social and arts causes in South Australia. As the South Australian Chief Entrepreneur, Andrew provides high-level, independent advice to the South Australian Cabinet and the business community to enable entrepreneurialism across all forms of business, industry, and the public sector.In this chat with Ian, Andrew discusses:* His own entrepreneurial journey * What exactly a Chief Entrepreneur does * How South Australia is growing into a startup hub * Why he is passionate about giving back to his community * South Australia's key strengths, including space, defense, agtech, and renewable energy

Quickfire recommendations: Book - Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice* by Bill Browder * Favorite tech CEO - Flavia Tata Nardini of Fleet Space Technologies * App - Spotify * Productivity tool - coffee * TV show - Seinfeld * Ted Talk topic - "The role philanthropy can play in innovation and entrepreneurship"

______________________________________If you're interested in joining Horizon Six Degrees, our community for angel investors in South Australia, email membership@innovationbay.com....KPMG High Growth Ventures surveyed 120 Australian startup founders about their satisfaction, work-life balance & future outlook. The report uncovers important insights into the state of founder health & wellbeing in Australia. Download the report here.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Danny Kennedy, New Energy Nexus * Imogen Baxter, Square Peg Capital * Matt Pearson. Airspeeder

Topics we discuss:Our panel discusses the open letter regarding climate change Aussie tech leaders penned to the government, whether or not founders should heed Scott Farquhar warning against bootstrapping, the recent plunge in Bitcoin and SafetyCulture's latest funding round.__________________Innovation Bay is hosting the Renewable Energy Founder Forum this October in partnership with ARENA. This forum provides a unique opportunity for renewable energy startups to pitch to the Australian investment community and key industry stakeholders. If your startup is shaping Australia's clean energy future, apply to pitch here.

Warrick Cramer was most recently the CEO of Vodafone’s Global Centre for Innovation in Europe, known as Tomorrow Street – a joint venture between Vodafone and the Government of Luxembourg to scale late-stage start-ups, assisting them to reach key global markets and make real change. Warrick sits on the board of a Silicon Valley based venture capital fund and is a Non-Executive Director for Advance.org.Prior to moving to Europe, Warrick was an established entrepreneur in Melbourne. Among the businesses he founded was Micro P, a mobile payment company which developed a highly successful payment security authentication system that still used by several banks today. Since returning to Australia in early 2020, Warrick has been consulting a number of organisations in the start-up sector.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Mike Zimmerman, Partner at Main Sequence Ventures * Andrew Horsley, Co-founder & CEO at Quantum Brilliance * Sarah Nolet, Partner at Tenacious Ventures

Topics we discuss:Our panel discusses Main Sequence Ventures' new $250m deep tech fund, the huge $221m raise by Brisbane-based Octopus Deploy, a $34m raise by seaweed livestock feed supplement maker Sea Forest and the Ingenuity helicopter flight on Mars.__________________If you are a prospective angel investor based in Adelaide interested in joining Horizon Six Degrees, Innovation Bay's new community for angels, email membership@innovationbay.com to discuss your potential candidacy as a founding member. More info here.

Peter Dunne is one of Australia’s leading venture capital and private equity lawyers, specialising in private capital raisings and M&A. Peter has advised on multibillion-dollar transactions, including acquisitions, buy-outs, disposals, joint ventures and recapitalisations, involving some of Australia’s largest public and private organisations; his clients include Atlassian, Canva, Deputy, Culture Amp, Linktree, BigCommerce, Campaign Monitor, Expert 360, SafteyCulture, Tyro, Zoox...the list goes on.In this conversation with Ian, Peter talks about...* Why he became a lawyer and how early experiences shaped his career * Why he's more interested in people than the size of deals * Key differences between private equity and venture capital * How he got involved in Atlassian's first capital raise * His approach to building a tech practice and choosing clients * His advice for startup founders who are fundraising * What "legal debt" is and how to avoid it

Quickfire recommendations Books: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez & To the Lighthouse* by Virginia Woolf * Podcast: This American Life * News source: The Economist or The Guardian * Tech founder: Luke Anear of SafetyCulture * Productivity tool: Atomic Habits * TV show: Dr. Who * Ted Talk topic: How we can inspire and help each other

____________________If you are a prospective angel investor based in Adelaide interested in joining Horizon Six Degrees, Innovation Bay's new community for angels, email membership@innovationbay.com to discuss your potential candidacy as a founding member. More info here.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

One Hundred Years of Solitude

To The Lighthouse: (Vintage Voyages)

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Dean Dorrell, Partner at Carthona Capital * Robyn Foyster, Director of Foyster Consulting * Gautam Mishra, Founder of Inkl

Topics we discuss:Canva's massive valuation, Coinbase IPO and the future of media are all hot topics in the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special.Our panel discusses Canva's position as one of the fastest-growing private technology companies in history off of the heels of their latest round of funding and the impact of Coinbase's IPO, both in the local VC market and on the future of cryptocurrency. We also talk about the shifting role of media, including Twitter's potential acquisition of Clubhouse, Substack's new focus on local news, and the rise of newsletters and paywalls. Some other topics include superannuation software and Peloton's arrival in Australia.__________________Attend Innovation Bay's upcoming breakfast panel "Fighting climate change with big data" Tuesday 20th April 8am-9am. Book your virtual ticket here.

Nick Carter is the is one of Australia’s leading energy experts; he is currently Senior Vice President of Energy Tech and Solutions at Macquarie in Australia where works across a range of areas from energy storage to renewable energy. He is an engineer by trade and has worked around the world for companies like Toyota, General Motors and Tesla. Nick has a real passion for electric vehicles (EVs) and this episode heavily focuses on the future of electronic vehicles in Australia.Some topics Nick covers in this conversation with Phaedon include:* Big changes in the EV space from the past year * How autonomous vehicles relate to electric vehicles * Electrification of the transport system and the opportunities it presents * How the grid will be impacted by an increase in EV uptake * Trends, challenges and opportunities in the EV space

Quickfire recommendations:* Book: What Is to Be Done: Political Engagement and Saving the Planet by Barry Jones * Podcast: The Driven podcast by the * News source: ABC News * Holiday location: Forrest, Victoria * Favorite founder or CEO: JB Straubel, Founder of Redwood Materials (Former CTO of Tesla) * Productivity tool: Trello * Ted talk topic: How to electrify the whole fleet

__________Join Innovation Bay at our upcoming Breakfast panel "Fighting climate change with big data". Four climate change experts will discuss how big data can be used to predict and prevent climate change. Register for your free virtual ticket here.

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Evan Hinchliffe, Technology Industry Lead for Macquarie Business Banking * Paul Smith, Technology Editor at AFR * Cate Hull, Founder and CEO of Freight Exchange

Topics we discuss:SPACs, ASX listings, cyber-attacks, tech ministry appointments and secondary funds are all up for discussion in this edition of OTPBD News Special.Our panel goes deep on the upcoming WeWork SPAC deal that will take the company public, as well as why Airwallex turned down a SPAC offer of their own. In the wake of a major cyberattack on Channel 9, panellists discuss the state of cybersecurity in Australia. The panel also discusses the tech industry's reaction to Christian Porter's appointment Industry, Science and Technology portfolio, as well as what the arrival of Second Quarter Ventures, Australia's first secondary fund means for the startup ecosystem.Evan Hinchliffe, Technology Industry Lead for Macquarie Business Banking also dives deep into the insights uncovered in the new Technology Pulse Check 2021 from Macquarie.__________________Attend Innovation Bay's upcoming breakfast panel "Fighting climate change with big data" Tuesday 20th April 8am-9am. Book your virtual ticket here.

David Warren is a co-founder and non-executive director of ASX200 software company Altium. David grew up in the suburbs of Launceston, Tasmania and attended the University of Tasmania (UTAS) where he studied physics and astronomy as an undergraduate, honours and postgraduate student in the late 1970s and early 80s. David recently gifted $2.6 million to UTAS to set up an endowed chair in the field of astrophysics.David co-founded Altium in Hobart in 1987, developing software to design circuit boards. He spent a year developing the business in Silicon Valley before Altium floated on the ASX in 1999. Altium's market cap currently sits around $4B. David also has a passion for flying, batteries and renewables. He has been a pilot since he was 17, helped build and fly the first electronic aircraft in the Southern Hemisphere and is an investor in Electro.Aero, an electric aviation company.In this chat with Phaedon, David discusses:* What it was like growing up and studying in Tasmania * His passion for electric aviation * How he and his co-founders started Altium * What he learned about building a sales engine * His experiences in Silicon Valley * What he looks for when he invests in businesses * Shifting roles of executives throughout Alitum's journey

Quickfire recommendations Book: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling * Podcast: The Science Show * News source: ABC * Founder/CEO: Elon Musk & Bill Gates * Productivity tool:* Excel

_____________________________________Horizon, Innovation Bay's community for experienced angel investors, is accepting applications from AI and health tech startups for two pitch events this May. Applications close Friday the 2nd of April. Apply here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMay

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think [Hardcover] [Jan 01, 2018] Hans Rosling

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Alicia Garden, Goanna Ag * Cara Waters, The Age & SMH * John Henderson, AirTree Ventures

Topics we discuss:In this edition, we talk about recently-announced funds in Australia, including LaunchVic's $10m sidecar fund to support women-led startups and Investible's new $50m fund. Piggybacking off of the announcement of LaunchVic's fund, the panel deep dives into the lack of funding for women-led startups in Australia and what needs to be done to address it. The panel also discusses the Roblox IPO, Vend acquisition by Lightspeed, CBA launching a BNPL competitor to AfterPay, Stripe's doubling of their valuation. Lastly, NFTs are on the table again as we discuss a $23m raise by OpenSea from Andreessen Horowitz.__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...* Roshan Ghadamian, VC Catalyst Program Director at Wade Institute * Emma Weston, AgriDigital * Annie Parker, Microsoft

Topics we discuss:In this edition, launched on International Women's Day, the panel starts by talking about the state of gender diversity within the Australian startup ecosystem and venture industry, where gaps exist and the work that needs to be done. The discussion then shifts to cover major headlines in tech; key topics include how blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFT) will be applied in the future and what can be learned from SpaceX dreaming big and publicly failing fast.Ian also gives a rundown of the major fundraising rounds from within Australia and around the world, including Lexer, Bond Capital and Hopin, as well as some big steps from Aussie startups like Fireball International and Swoop Aero.__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Kristin Vaughan is the Director of the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, the largest dedicated cleantech investor in Australia, created to invest $200 million in early-stage clean technology companies. Prior to joining CEFC, Kristin spent more than a decade in private equity. Kristin previously worked as a management consultant at AT Kearney and holds a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney.In this chat with Ian, Kristin discusses:* Her career journey and how it led to investing in cleantech * Where the opportunities are in renewables in Australia * Australian startups with innovative clean energy tech * The role of carbon pricing

Quickfire Round Recommendations* Book: Into Thin Air, Touching the Void and The Adventurer's Son * Podcast: The Interchange from Greentech Media & How I Built This * News source: The Guardian, ABC, AFR * Favourite tech CEO: Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia) * App: LastPass * Productivity tool: Pen & paper to-do lists

__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

None

Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Amanda CoombsKevin Baum, AgriwebbJared Kendler, Precincts and Innovation Ecosystems at NSW TreasuryTopics we discuss:In this edition, our news panel dives deep into the showdown between Facebook and the Australian government and news outlets. We also discuss new funds from Artesian, Our Innovation Fund and Skip Capital, the status of the New South Wales tech precinct and Judo Bank's massive $284 million funding round.__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Colette Grgic is no stranger to startups. She is the Head of Startup Ecosystem in Australia & New Zealand for Amazon Web Services. In this role, Colette is responsible for the growth of the startup ecosystem at AWS and leads an excellent team who support startups with commercial and technical advice. She also serves as a Director of Heads Over Heels. Prior to her role at AWS, Colette was Chief Innovation Officer at BlueChilli. Colette also founded her own travel tech startup, Arribaa, and managed Autogenie, an internal startup for ASX-listed Smartgroup.In this chat with Ian, Colette shares...* What is was like growing up in South Africa and Canada * How she developed a passion for innovation and startups * The story of founding her startup Arribaa ("the Airbnb of experiences") * The highs and lows of her 6-year journey with BlueChilli * Her favourite parts of her role at AWS * Where the magic happens between corporates and startups * How the AWS Activate program can help startups scale

Quickfire RecommendationsBook: The AlchemistPodcast: Masters of ScaleNews source: AFRFavorite tech CEO: Silvia Pfeiffer of CoviuApp: PictureThis (plant identification app)Ted talk topic: How do you change people's minds about the environment?If you're looking to scale your startup, apply to the AWS Activate program to receive AWS credits, AWS support plan credits and training to help grow your business: https://aws.amazon.com/activate/__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

The Alchemist - Gift Edition

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Colette Grgic, AWSSteve Fanale, DriveYellowSimon Cant, ReinventureTopics we discuss:In this edition, we discuss local startup funding news, including raises by Fast, DesignCrowd and Adatree and NAB's acquisition of Neobank 86 400. The panel also dives deep on cryptocurrency, the GameStop fiasco, what's happening in fintech and the future of work.If you are an Aussie startup founder keen to network with investors from around the country, be sure to apply to pitch at the _SOUTHSTART x Innovation Bay Startup Showcase in Adelaide this May. We will be selecting the top 16 startups to present. Apply here: https://bit.ly/southstart_showcase__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Suse Reynolds is a pillar of the New Zealand startup ecosystem and a passionate believer in the power of angel investment. She is the Executive Chair of Angel Association New Zealand and sits on the board of Angel HQ, the Wellington region's angel network which she founded in 2006. Since its founding, AngelHQ has invested over $30m in 100+ New Zealand companies.In this chat with Phaedon, Suse shares...-Her personal angel investing philosophy-How she sources and evaluates deals-Her advice for founders seeking angel investment-What gets her excited to invest-Why she's focused on founder wellbeingQuickfire Round Recommendations-Book: Stalin's Wine Cellar and Upside of Stress-Podcast: Dare to Lead Brené Brown episode with Barack Obama-News Source: Newsroom, Business Desk, New York Times, BBC-Holiday Location: Palau and Tonga-Favorite Founder: Ben Gleisner (CoGo)-Productivity Tool: Spend 10 minutes everyday setting 3 goals-Ted Talk Topic: Why Open Borders Are a Good Thing__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

Stalin's Wine Cellar

About DanDan Krasnostein is an Investment Partner at Square Peg Capital. A Melbourne native, Dan spent the early days of his career working in strategy at Seek before joining Square Peg in 2012 as the first non-founder hire. He spent a few years working for Square Peg in Melbourne before relocating to Tel Aviv where he spent 6 years growing Square Peg's business in Israel. Square Peg has deployed over $140M in Israel across 13 companies, including Fiverr, Aidoc, Feedvisor and Puresec.In this chat with Phaedon, Dan shares...* His advice for entrepreneurs - work hard building your network and never stop talking about your idea * Key differences between the startup ecosystem in Israel vs. Australia * How the fear of failure is holding Aussie founders back * Why speed in shipping product, hiring, executing, following up and more is such a big advantage in a competitive world * What can be learned from Israeli startups that are global from day 1 * Why arguments are healthy but grudges are not

Recommendations Book: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art * Podcast: Invest Like the Best* * News Source: LinkedIn * Best Holiday Location: Frasier Island & Italy * Favourite Founder/CEO: Brian Chesky of Airbnb * Productivity Tool: Krisp * Ted Talk Topic: Managing hotel quarantine with three kids

__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Breath: The Lost Art and Science of Our Most Misunderstood Function

After a brief holiday hiatus, we're back with another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Marisa Warren, ALIAVIA VenturesAndy McKeon, SafetyCultureFrancis Vierboom, Propeller AeroTopics we discuss:In this edition, we discuss local startup news such as the tech stocks set to list on the ASX in 2021, Afterpay's $42B valuation and recent raises by AgriWebb and Vow. There is also lots of global news to cover, including a boom in Bitcoin, the impeachment of Trump, the inauguration of Biden, and Elon Musk's new spot atop the world rich list.__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May in Sydney and Melbourne for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Angus Hervey is a political economist and a journalist specialising in the impact of disruptive technologies on society. Angus is a champion of "intelligent optimism" and co-founder of Future Crunch, a Melbourne-based think tank of sorts dedicated to informed, optimistic thinking about tech and the opportunities that it presents. Before co-founding Future Crunch, Angus was the founding community manager of Random Hacks of Kindness and was the first editorial manager for Global Policy, one of the world's leading international policy journals. He also holds a PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics.In this wide-ranging chat with Phaedon, Angus discusses the three pillars of intelligent optimism, why he considers social media a drug, what the emergence of "the passion economy" means for online businesses, and why the media can't portray what life is like for the average person. Angus also talks about the key transformative technologies he thinks will drive the next industrial revolution, diving into topics like the distinction between machine learning and artificial intelligence, the valley of death that exists for Australian biotech and the barriers and opportunities for clean energy technologies.For a regular dose of science, tech and intelligent optimism, subscribe to the weekly Future Crunch newsletter here.Quickfire Recommendations-Book: The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova-Podcast: a16z-News source: Reddit and The Whippet newsletter by McKinley Valentine-Favourite holiday: Anywhere in South Africa-Productivity tool: Cold Turkey (it's a powerful website blocker)-Favourite founder/CEO: The founders of Tritium and Conflux Technology-Ted Talk topic: "It's Never as Bad or as Good as You Think It Is"__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May in Sydney and Melbourne for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

The Biggest Bluff

Tim Power is a talented, passionate, resilient founder who has co-founded and created some of the world's largest education communities including the World Education Games, World Maths Day, Mathletics and ClickView. He is currently the cofounder and CEO of Inquisitive, the Sydney-based education startup on a mission to simplify access to quality lessons for teachers.In this conversation with Ian, Tim talks about why he made the switch from being a lawyer to being an entrepreneur, the highlights of growing Mathletics, how he transformed the insights he collected observing teachers in classrooms into Inquisitive, and the progress Inquisitive has made since its founding in 2016. Tim also dives deeper into how Inquisitive improves learning outcomes and saves teachers valuable time, why building community has accelerated the growth of the company and Inquisitive's fundraising journey.Quickfire Recommendations-Book: A Fortunate Life-Podcast: Conversations with Richard Fidler and The Mojo Sessions-News Source: The Guardian and The Australian (Tim reckons the truth is somewhere in between)-Favourite Tech CEO: Steve Jobs-App: Spotify-Productivity Tool: Slack-TV Show: Game of Thrones-Ted Talk Topic: Solving Big Problems in Education and Schools__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May in Sydney and Melbourne for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

A Fortunate Life

Today's episode features one of Australia's best and most prolific angel investors, Matt Allen. Matt's portfolio includes companies like BuildKite, Practice Ignition, Spaceship, Kasada, Donesafe, Pin and Goterra. At one point or another Matt has been a software developer, founder, technical recruiter, investor and now, a CEO. Most recently, Matt launched Tractor Ventures, a new vehicle for investing that offers founders revenue-based financing. Matt and his team at Tractor Ventures are grounded in the belief that secure founders make better business decisions; venture capital money simply isn't the right fit for every business, so Tractor Ventures is filling a funding gap for ambitious founders who want to grow their businesses at a pace that suits them.In this chat with Ian, Matt talks a lot about his journey as an investor and his approach to angel investing. He explains how making a pretty big bet on Xero got him started with investing, how he collaborates with his wife Aprill on investments and the importance of trust when backing a founder. Matt goes on to share advice for people who want to start angel investing, discussing the what the right check size looks like, the value of syndicates and how to find the sweet spot between individual expertise and interest when building a portfolio. Matt also discusses why his team started Tractor Ventures and how the business works, his experiences working with Startmate, why he never answers emails about blockchain and the story behind his iconic blue cap.Reach Matt on Twitter @mattallen and check out Tractor Ventures.Quickfire Recommendations-Book: Turn the Ship Around!by L. David Marquet-Podcast: Out of Beta-News Source: AFR-Favourite Tech CEO: Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar-App: Slack, Mailplane-Productivity Tool: Summit-Ted Talk Topic: The balance between hungry and starving founders__________________Innovation Bay is holding AI and health tech-focused pitch events this May in Sydney and Melbourne for Horizon, our community of experienced angel investors. If you are the founder of an AI or health tech startup looking to network with angels who can offer advice, connections and capital, apply to pitch here: https://bit.ly/PitchHorizonMayWomen-led startups in Victoria, apply to connect with Horizon: https://bit.ly/VictorianFemaleFounders

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Bex Eastwood, Ignition LaneNick Gainsley, OneVenturesElliot Smith, Maxwell PlusTopics we discuss:In this news special, we discuss local fundraising news including the announcement of new funds from Square Peg, OneVentures, EVP and Tractor Ventures, as well as funding rounds from Coviu and Healthmatch. We also cover global news and deals like Doordash and Airbnb IPOs, the acquisition of Slack by Salesforce, and Uber's sale of their autonomous driving unit.For weekly startup news, subscribe to Ignition Lane's Weekly Wrap newsletter here.

This episode features Mike Kleine, the U.S. Consul General to Melbourne. Mike has spent over 20 years of his career working in the Foreign Service; he's been posted across the globe including in Laos, Vietnam, South Korea, and Kosovo. Mike has a deep-seated interest in entrepreneurship, a fascination with innovation, and a passion for the U.S.-Australia relationship. These passions converged and led to the creation of his podcast series, 37 Degrees Latitude.In his podcast, Mike meets the Australian founders and entrepreneurs who cut a path between 37˚ N & S (at 37˚S, you’ll find Melbourne, Australia; at 37˚N, you’ll find Silicon Valley!) and found capital, partners, markets and success in the United States. He interviews the likes of Didier Elzinga from Culture Amp, Nick Crocker from Blackbird and Kate Kendall from CloudPeeps. Season 2 of 37 Degrees Latitude will feature conversations with Aussie startup founders currently based in the U.S.In this chat with Phaedon, Mike starts off talking a bit about what he does in his role as Consul General including promoting trade, investment, and the U.S.-Australia relationship and how he stumbled into the startup ecosystem. He then covers the common themes he's observed across his conversations on 37 Degrees Latitude, such as the importance of networks, key differences between U.S. and Australian culture, like tall poppy syndrome and self-deprecation, and increasing the odds of serendipity. Mike then shares his tips for Aussie founders looking to expand in the U.S. such as the importance of setting up a U.S. office and the value of the E3 visa.Quickfire Round Recommendations Book: Boys in the Boat* by Daniel James Brown * Podcast: The Daily, How I Built This, The Tim Ferriss Show * News Source: Herald Sun, The Age, AFR, SBS, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post * Best Holiday Destination: Tasmania * Favorite Founder/CEO: Brian Chesky, Airbnb * Productivity Tool: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Headspace * Ted Talk Topic: What Australia Taught Me About the Traditional Owners of My Land

The Boys In The Boat

In this episode, Phaedon is joined by Clare O'Neil MP, the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work and Federal Member for Hotham, Victoria. We don't often feature politicians on the podcast but we believe that it is important to understand the view of government and how government policies impact the startup ecosystem. Clare speaks with candor and openness on the changes she wants to see in the future of politics.To start, Clare talks about her background, including her path to politics (starting when she joined the Labour party at 16!), what it was like growing up with entrepreneurial book publishing parents and how her experience working in the private sector shapes her outlook as the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work. She also shares her views on the role of government and her advice for anyone considering a career in politics.After Clare covers her personal journey, the conversation shifts to the startup ecosystem. Phaedon and Clare discuss:* Clare's ideas for nurturing the startup ecosystem, such as a more strategic approach to technology from government, amendments to the R&D Tax Incentive Program, and improved immigration and education programs to attract and nurture essential tech skills * How to amp up Australian angel investing * Whether the attitude towards failure is changing in Australia

Quickfire Round Recommendations* Book: The New Class War by Michael Lind * Podcast: Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin * News Source: New York Times * Holiday Location: South Coast NSW * Favorite Founder/CEO: Didier Elzinga(Culture Amp) * Productivity Tool: Trello * TedTalk Topic: Why We Care About Our Children but Don't Give Them a Voice in Society

Check out The Long View, Clare's podcast and her book Two Futures.

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Yolanda Redrup, AFRJames Alexander, Galileo VenturesJustin Webb, AgriWebbTopics we discuss:In this news special, we discuss recent raises by Marketplacer, Morse Micro, Flare, Hypr and Diffuse Energy. There was lots of big news coming out of the Victorian startup ecosystem to cover, including the new budget which allocates $186m to startups and the establishment of a $25m Victorian venture fund. We also talk about the tech founders that made this year's AFR Young Rich List, Andreessen Horowitz closing two mega funds, the spike in Bitcoin, Macquarie Telecom becoming a unicorn and lots more.

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...James Riley, Innovation AusAmanda Price, KPMG High Growth VenturesVuki Vujasinovic, Sling and StoneTopics we discuss:In this news special, we discuss the recent and upcoming IPOs of several Aussie companies including Hipages, Booktopia and Airtasker, as well as global and local funding news like Hopin's recent $125m raise and Aussie accounting platform Bookipi's $1.6m seed round. We also talk about how the recent positive vaccine news and the results of the US election might impact the Australian startup ecosystem.As mentioned in this episode, the 2020 Founder Survey from KPMG High Growth Ventures is now live. If you're a startup founder willing to reflect on your work-life balance, health and wellbeing, participate in the survey here.

Patrick Llewellyn is the CEO and President of 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together. Patrick is Open the Pod Bay Door's second ever two-time guest. Since we've last chatted with Patrick, a lot has happened for 99designs. 99designs now employs over 100 people, has a community of over 25,000 active freelance designers, and in October, was acquired by global printing giant Vistaprint.In this chat with Ian, Patrick speaks about his lockdown experience living in Melbourne, how a plan for a massive global restructuring was completely disrupted in March by COVID-19, and how a casual coffee meeting with the founder of Vistaprint ultimately led to an acquisition. Patrick dives deep into his mindset and decision making progress around the acquisition and how the company and his role will evolve as a result of the new partnership. Some other topics covered include how reverse brain drain may be impacting the talent market and the key macro insights from the new Design Without Borders: The Future of Freelancing report from 99designs.Recommendations from Patrick Book: Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It... and Why the Rest Don't* by Verne Harnish * Podcast: Recode Decode, Pivot, Techmeme Ride Home * Productivity tool/app: Spotify (to listen to podcasts at 1.2x speed) * Favorite tech CEO: Mike & Scott from Atlassian, Melanie Perkins from Canva, Luke Annear from SafetyCulture * Ted Talk topic: "Globalization isn't a dirty word"

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Rebecca Wilson, Starts at 60Justin Lipman, EVPJodie Imam, SBE AustraliaTopics we discuss:In this news special we cover Adore Beauty's ASX debut, lots of recent local raises from the likes of Linktree, Sundrive, Zero Co, v2food, and SafetyCulture and the downfall of Quibi. Elections are up for discussion, including how the outcome of the US election could affect local startups and the results of the Queensland election. We also discuss Antler Sydney's hot streak and the arrival of the "no-code" generation.

Welcome to a very special milestone for Open the Pod Bay Doors -- our 100th episode! To mark the occasion we brought back some of our favorite guests from the past 3 years of the podcast and asked them what they're most looking forward to in the next 3 years.A rockstar lineup of investors and founders shared their insights: Daniel Petre (E1), Luke Anear (E20 & E79), Niki Scevak (E14), Leigh Jasper (E86), Kate Cornick (E45), Patrick Llewellyn (E26), Ben Keighran (E56), Sam Sicilia (E60), Paul Bassat (E69), Alan Jones (E33), David Walsh (E96), Olympia Yarger (E94), Sam Wong (E42), James Cuda (E43), and Emma Weston (E51). Their vision for the next 3 years certainly has us excited for what's to come.We'd like to extend a huge thank you to our listeners, all of our amazing guests, and our supportive sponsors AWS, AIG Firemark Ventures, KPMG High Growth Ventures, and Macquarie who have made the last 100 episodes possible. Here's to the next 100!

Welcome to a fresh edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel...Sam Wong, BlackbirdBronwen Clune, InklMick Liubinskas, Director of Product and Growth for BCG Digital Ventures and Author of She's Building A Robot!Topics we discuss:As always, we cover recent local and global deals like 99designs being acquired by Vistaprint, an oversubscribed Epi Minder Series A, Hopin raising a new round at a valuation of as much as $2 billion, and two new deals from agtech-focused VC firm Tenacious Ventures. The panel discusses whether COVID-19 is accelerating reverse brain drain with more Aussies and Kiwis flocking home, the decline in funding for female founders shown in Quarterly VC's funding report, a recent instance of Facebook and Twitter cracking down on fake news and what measures can be taken to regulate the role social media plays in society, à la Social Dilemma. We also talk about a splash for cash for science and tech in the federal government budget, Startmate's first all virtual cohort, and progress on renewables, with renewables reaching 100% demand in SA for the first time ever.

Chris Hitchen is the Germany-based, Australian-born Founder and Managing Partner of Inventures. Inventures invests €100k - €500k globally in early stage tech companies and actively helps founders reach their first institutional VC Round. Chris started out as an entrepreneur; he built and sold price comparison business Getprice to News Corp, eCommerce marketplace Next Commerce to Future PLC and programmatic ad marketplace Hynt to Zalando. He has invested in more than 60 startups. Prior to establishing Inventures, he was an angel investor and worked as Venture Partner with VC funds EQT Ventures, Project A and SquarePeg Capital.In this chat with Phaedon, Chris talks about:* His investment thesis and the structure of his portfolio * What he looks for in a founder * Why he doesn’t join boards anymore * The backchannels he uses to conduct due diligence * The LPs that make up his fund

Recommendations from Chris:Books - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Evans, The Road to Character by David BrooksPodcast - The Twenty Minute VC, Notion Capital, Where Should We Begin with Esther PerelNews Source - TwitterHoliday Destination - South Tyrol, Italy Favorite Founders - Bill Gates, Mike Cannon-BrookesProductivity Tool - QatalogTed Talk Topic - "How We Turn Off & Disengage"

Where the Crawdads Sing

The Road to Character

Today's guest is Melissa Widner, an experienced founder, CEO, investor and board member. She very recently left NAB Ventures to join Lighter Capital, one of NAB's portfolio companies, as CEO. Lighter Capital is the pioneer and leading provider of revenue based financing to SAAS companies. Prior to Lighter and NAB, she was the General Partner at SeaPoint Ventures, a US based venture capital firm and was CEO of 7Software and Northwest Supply where under her leadership, both companies generated over a 10X return to investors. In 2009, Melissa relocated to Sydney with her Australian husband. One year later, Melissa co-founded Heads Over Heels, an organisation that works with female entrepreneurs leading companies with high growth potential.In this conversation with Ian, Melissa discusses:• Why NAB is such a breeding ground for great VC talent • How starting a hair bow business in university led to landing a CEO role right out of college at an industrial supply company • Why 7Software's acquisition taught her the importance of timing • How Heads Over Heels accelerates the networks of female entrepreneurs • Why she left her Managing Partner role at NAB Ventures for CEO role at Lighter Capital• How Lighter is coping with COVID-19• Why she decided to join our Summit Club peer group for foundersRelevant linksMore about Lighter CapitalMelissa's LinkedInHeads Over HeelsRecommendationsBook: Mindset by Carol Dweck & Thinking in Bets by Annie DukePodcast: Squiz, Pivot, and Grammar GirlNews Source: New York Times App: SpotifyFavorite Tech CEO: Melanie Perkins, CanvaTV Show: The Late Show with Stephen ColbertTED Talk Topic: Why We Need More Women VCs

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...Tim Burrowes, MumbrellaJackie Vullinghs, AirtreeSteve Fanale, Drive Yello
Topics we discuss:Our panel discussed the explosion of e-commerce in Australia, changes to the JobKeeper program, and recent revelations about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Some other topics include the launch of Amazon's new indoor home drone, Airtree's new explorer program, and easing restrictions in Melbourne. We also talk about recent raises from companies including Airwallex, Airbirds, Snapper and Catalyst and IPOs from Adore Beauty, Palantir and Asana.

Daniel Darling is the founder and managing partner of Darling Ventures, an early stage VC firm based in San Francisco. Daniel is an Aussie that's been working in the California tech scene for over a decade. He started his journey on the founding team of Mobile Interactive Group, an advertising tech startup that was acquired by NASDAQ-listed Velti for $60M. Back in 2014 he identified a unique opportunity to build a venture firm that would grant Aussie investors access to US-based investment opportunities. He swapped his operator hat for an investor hat, and founded Darling Ventures. Their specialty is writing the very first check for domain-expert founders using software and data to transform an industry. 6 years on, the firm has made 23 investments to date and recently launched Fund 3, a $30 million pre-seed fund.In this conversation with Phaedon, Daniel discusses his early career experience working in ad tech, his unique investment thesis, and how he prepares portfolio companies for rockstar series A rounds. Daniel also shares his advice for angel investors new to tech, how he mitigates the many risks that accompany early stage investments, what his due diligence process looks like, and the role he believes a great investor plays in a founder's journey.

Welcome to Innovation Bay's OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet this week's panel...Founder: Olympia Yarger, GOTERRAInvestor: Andrea Gardiner, Jelix VenturesEcosystem Leader: Alex McCauly, StartupAus
Topics we discuss:Some of the biggest headlines our panel discussed are the continuing war over media bargaining between the Government and the tech giants, and what to expect from the the Federal budget in a few weeks. We also talk about the Safety Culture's first acquisition of EdApp, Atlassian's announcement of a new $70M venture fund, plus Snowflakes record breaking IPO with predictions on which other unicorns will go public.

Large buildings are both economically and environmentally costly to operate. David Walsh saw lots of data flowing in and around these inefficient buildings but there was no focus on using this data to find or fix the root causes of wastage. That's why he founded CIM in 2013. CIM's platform analyses building data to detect faults and inefficiencies that are wasting energy, saving their customers money and improving environmental outcomes. Today, CIM counts 58% of premium grade shopping grade centres in Australia as customers, has offices in Dublin, London and Sydney, and employs just under 40 people.In David's conversation with Ian, he talks about his personal career journey, starting as an Irish backpacker in Australia, how he's attracted an incredibly talented team with a sustainability-focused mission, and the ways to overcome the challenges of enterprise sales. David also discusses why he was determined to bootstrap as long as possible, the importance of maintaining strong company culture, and how CIM doubled revenue even when their customers were clobbered by the pandemic.Don't miss this chat with a resilient, reflective founder cracking a hugely important problem.

Olivia Humphrey is the founder, former CEO, and current executive chairman of Kanopy, the award-winning video streaming service for universities and libraries. She worked in media rights management at the BBC and Village Roadshow for 10 years before founding Kanopy in Perth back in 2008. After growing the business for a few years, Olivia and her young family packed up and moved to San Francisco in 2013 to help Kanopy's overseas expansion. Today, millions of students at thousands of universities use Kanopy's service. Olivia transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman in 2019 and moved back to Perth. She was recently appointed entrepreneur-in-residence at Curtin University.In this conversation with Phaedon, Olivia talks about...* How to think about growing beyond Australia from the start * Scaling once landing in the US * The pros and cons of bootstrapping * The process of exiting Kanopy * What's next for her

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet the panel...Founder: Emma Weston, AgriDigitalInvestor: Craig Blair, AirTree VenturesEcosystem Leader: Michael Bakto, StartmateTopics we discuss:Some of the biggest headlines our panel discussed include the federal government's news battle vs. Facebook and Google, recent volatility in tech stocks, and big upcoming tech IPOs. We also talk about the launch of Second Quarter Ventures, the new secondary fund from David Tarascio, Andrew Spykes, Ian Beatty, and Leigh Jasper, the role tech jobs will play in Australia's economic recovery, and Elon Musk's Nuralink chip.

Olympia Yarger, founder and CEO of GoTerra, is converting food waste into livestock feed by using robots, AI, and maggots. Yes, maggots. After years of working across many different agriculture sectors, Olympia knew she wanted to find a new way to help farmers and make farms more efficient. It was only when she starting farming insects to feed her own poultry that she stumbled upon the solution. She was blown away by how difficult insect farming was and decided to engineer her own fix; she ended up developing a high-tech solution in which maggots in robot-run automated capsules turn food waste into animal feed and fertiliser. Olympia welded the first prototype herself and GoTerra was born. Since founding GoTerra in 2016, she's steadily scaled operations and recently completed a $6 million Series A round of funding with Grok Ventures and Tenacious Ventures to fuel future growth. Olympia is living proof that with time, passion, and tenacity, you can solve big problems.
Some specific topics touched upon in Phaedon's interview with Olympia include: the nitty gritty of how GoTerra's capsules work and the business model, why GoTerra is trying to enact change without disruption, how Olympia transitioned from agriculture to tech, why naivety sometimes beats knowledge, how she inspired her early team to join GoTerra, and what the next big steps for her company are.

Welcome to the latest edition of OTPBD News Special, Innovation Bay's fortnightly podcast analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.
Meet the panel...Founder: James Ferguson, Immutable GamesInvestor: Niki Scevak, BlackbirdEcosystem: Cheryl Mack, Stone & Chalk
Topics we discuss:Our panel covers recent funding news, including raises by See Mode, Buildkite, SpaceX and Blackbird's new fund. Some other key topics include Canva and Atlassian blasting changes to R&D tax scheme, the COVID-19 Global Venture Funding report from Crunchbase, and AirBnb's upcoming IPO. Our panel also discuss the growth of edtech, the formation of a new venture fund for female founders by Marisa Warren and Kate Vale, Expert360's Bridget Loudon joining the Telstra board, and the ongoing battle between Apple and Epic, the creator of Fortnite.

David Shein first emigrated from South Africa to Australia in 1986. 9 months after touching down he founded his company Com Tech, a specialist supplier of networking and communications products. He grew the business for 14 years and eventually sold it to Dimension Data for over $1bil. At the time of David's exit, Com Tech employed over 1,400 people, had offices Australia wide, and achieved revenues of $700 million. After leaving Com Tech, David transitioned into becoming an investor and mentor to a number of startups. He is the GP and cofounder of Our Innovation Fund, an early stage venture capital fund that invests in exciting Australian startups, as well as a founding partner in the Israeli Venture Capital enterprise, OurCrowd, the first Global Equity Based Crowd Funding Platform.In this episode, David discusses:-Where his love of mentoring startups comes from-Why he feels lucky to have landed a terrible job when he first arrived in Australia-How customer service fueled his company's growth-Why he was called a "one minute manager"-The challenge of transitioning out of the role of founder after exiting-His philosophy towards the investor-founder relationship...and a whole lot more! Ian loved having a chat with David and we think you'll love giving it a listen.

Kristo Käärmann is the co-founder and CEO of TransferWise, a peer-to-peer international money transfer business. Kristo Käärmann cofounded TransferWise in London in 2011 with fellow Estonian Taavet Hinrikus, the first employee at Skype. Since then, the business has amassed over 8 million customers and moves more than US$5 billion every month. TransferWise has 2,200 employees in 14 global offices and is valued at US$3.5 billion.In this conversation, Ian and Kristo discuss:• The origin story of TransferWise• Kristo's experiences raising capital• The highlights and challenges Kristo has encountered scaling the company• Impact of the pandemic on TransferWise

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, Innovation Bay's fortnightly podcast that analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet the panel...Founder: Lauren Hall, iVvyInvestor: Bede Moore, Antler Ecosystem Leader: Angus Hervey, FutureCrunchTopics we discuss:In this episode our panel covers ANZ funding news, including raises by Jig Space, Pyn and XYSense, as well as relevant local and global news. Some key topics include Blackbird's new fund, the BigCommerce IPO, and the government's mandate that Google and Facebook pay for news. We also talk about COVID-related news such as Atlassian and Facebook's new WFH policies, some good COVID stories you might have missed, and the big dip in hotel transactions.

Tom Humphrey is an experienced Aussie entrepreneur and Partner at Access Ventures, a venture capital fund based in Denver, Colorado that invests in early stage technology companies. Before joining Access, Tom helped grow two successful startups, OurDeal and Kanopy. He was COO of OurDeal, a “group-buying” ecommerce website in Australia and helped scale the business to a successful exit to News Corp. Tom was also COO/Director of Sales of Kanopy, a B2B video streaming platform that he saw through an exit to L2 Capital in 2018, delivering a 14x return to investors.In Phaedon's conversation with Tom, the two cover:• The story of building Kanopy with his sister Olivia• How Tom managed rapid growth when OneDeal scaled from 8 employees to 80+ in a year• The segments and markets Tom is excited to invest in• Qualities Tom looks for in a founder• The value of partnering with a VC• Why he lives in Colorado instead of San Francisco

Sarah Nolet is one of Australia's leading agriculture technology (agtech) experts. She's the founder and CEO of AgThentic, an agtech strategy and advisory firm, and the co-founder of Tenacious Ventures, Australia’s first dedicated agrifood tech VC firm. Sarah also hosts the podcast "Agtech - So What" which tells the story of innovators at the intersection of agriculture and technology.In this episode, Sarah talks about her professional journey moving to Australia and growing the agtech ecosystem here, cofounding a new venture fund, and starting a podcast. She also shares the criteria her fund uses when evaluating food and agriculture startups, the first addition to the Tenacious Ventures portfolio, and some insights about sustainable farming.

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly podcast analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet the panel...Founder: Billy Tucker, OneFlareInvestor: Melissa Widner, NAB VenturesEcosystem Leader: Gavin Appel, Ignition LaneTopics we discuss:In this episode our panel covers both ANZ happenings and global headlines. Some local topics covered include local funding news, people moves, the best Aussie employers of 2020 and TikTok scrutiny from the Australian government. We also talk about world news like the international boycott Facebook movement, Bitcoin scammers, and COVID app woes around the globe.

Stephen Thompson is a founding partner and managing director of Brandon Capital Partners, the largest life science healthcare fund in Australasia. Brandon Capital raised their first fund in 2007 with the mission of commercializing Australian medical research. Stephen and his co-founder noticed that Australia was home to loads of world-class medical research but didn't have the weight of local capital to bring projects through to market, so they stepped in in to provide the funding and expertise to get ideas out of the lab and into the global market.In this episode, Ian speaks with Stephen about...* Shifting from technical work in product development and immunology research to investing * The story of how Brandon Capital came to be * An overview of the Brandon Capital portfolio * The incubation model the firm uses to identify and commercialise research * The process of building a highly trained team

Hello and welcome to the 8th edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly podcast analysing the news that matters to Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel:VC: Alan Jones, M8 VenturesFounder: Kath Hamilton, Loop+Ecosystem: Annie Parker, MicrosoftTopics we discuss:This week we cover the latest funding news and discuss hot topics like the impact of the Victorian COVID-19 outbreak on the startup sector, India and potentially the US banning Tik Tok, venture reports on funding throughout the pandemic, and Tesla's surge in valuation. We also talk about Who Gives a Crap's $6M donation to charity in the wake of TP panic-buying, the government's investment in cybersecurity, toxic workplace culture, and the classification of Huawei and ZTE as "National security threats" by the US.

We're joined this week by Vuki Vujasinovic, Founder & CEO of global PR and communications agency Sling & Stone. The agency has quite the rockstar client roster; some current clients in the US, AU and NZ include Twitter, Uber, Xero, Hubspot, CultureAmp, Slack, Stripe, CSIRO, Domain...the list goes on. The agency launched in 2010 and exclusively works with disrupters, challengers, and entrepreneurs, helping tell their story to the world with comms campaigns that blend tech and creativity.In this chat with Ian, Vuki talks about...* Launching the agency at the age of 23 * The process of slowly growing the business over the past 10 years * Encouraging entrepreneurial instincts within his team * The process of growing with startup clients * How sometimes the job requires him to be like a VC when selecting early stage clients * Advice for companies on how to alter communications in a crisis like COVID-19

Welcome to the 7th edition of the OTPBD News Special! It’s our fortnightly podcast analysing news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups.Meet this week's panel:VC: Sarah Nolet, Tenacious Ventures & AgThenticFounder: Adam Theobald, OrdermentumEcosystem: Paul Smith, AFRTopics we discuss:We cover funding news, the acquisition of self-driving startup ZOOX by Amazon, the federal government's big investment in cyber security, Atlassian's announcement of brand new headquarters at the Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct, Canva's latest $8.6 billion valuation, the future of coworking, and Sydney's dropping in the startup ecosystem ranking.

Sam Chandler is the Founder and CEO of Nitro, a software company developing commercial software used to create, edit, sign, and secure Portable Document Format files and digital documents. Nitro is Australian-founded and is now listed on the ASX and headquartered in downtown San Francisco, with offices in Melbourne, Australia; Dublin, Ireland; and London, England.Sam grew up in Tasmania and started his first business at the age of 16. He started Nitro back in 2005 with a seed round of $1M and a $5M valuation after a few years of bootstrapping. The company went on to complete a Series A with Starfish Ventures and a Series B/C with Battery Ventures in San Francisco. Nitro launched in the US in 2008. The company has grown significantly in the past decade; Nitro has nearly 2 million licensed users in 144 countries and over 10,500 business customers, including over 65% of the Fortune 500 and two of the Fortune 10.In this episode, Sam talks about* The journey of building and growing Nitro form the ground up * Adaptations Nitro has made in wake of COVID-19 * The process of designing a global team

..and more! Give this episode a listen for insights from a dynamic Aussie founder.

Welcome to the 6th edition of the OTPBD News Special. It’s our fortnightly podcast that anaylses the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.Meet this week's panel:VC: Dean Dorrell, Carthona CapitalFounder: Gemma Lloyd, Work180Ecosystem: Mark Pesce, This Week In StartupsTopics we discuss:We cover the latest funding news and discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and how tech companies have responded, such as IBM's decision to stop selling facial recognition software to police. We also discuss startup job losses and revenue hits as reported by VC firms, what type of help startups will need post-Job Keeper, and the recent rapid progress of telehealth due to COVID.

Leigh Jasper is the co-founder and CEO of Aconex, the world's most widely used cloud collaboration platform for construction, engineering and infrastructure projects. Aconex was acquired by Oracle in 2018 for $1.6B. Leigh started the business back in 2000 with school friend Rob Philpot, after working at McKinsey & Company where he consulted for clients in the financial services, media and information technology sectors. The duo founded Aconex with the view of transforming the construction industry and raised a $1.6M seed round pre-product. Leigh is now an active angel investor with over 20 investments in tech startups.In this episode, Leigh discusses:-Managing the co-founder relationship-The value of an executive coach-Advice for businesses managing through COVID-19, drawing from his dot-com bubble and GFC experiences-The journey of building and growing Aconex-Tried and tested fundraising lessons for founders

Fred Schebesta is a serial entrepreneur, best known for co-founding finder.com, one of the world’s leading comparison websites. Before launching Finder, he started Freestyle Media, a successful digital marketing agency, while at university. In 2007, Freestyle was sold to a public company and the funds were used to start Finder.com. Fred, with his co-founder Frank Restuccia, have grown Finder organically without funding to $100M+ revenue, 1,000+ products on the platform, 83 countries, and 360 employees around the world.In this episode, Fred discusses:-His entrepreneurial journey from Freestyle Media to Finder-Observations and predictions for how life and business will change post-COVID-How Finder is constantly reinventing itself to stay alive-His advice for managing the co-founder relationship

Welcome to the fifth edition of OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly podcast looking at the stories behind the headlines of the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.Today, our panel features...VC: Elicia McDonald, Principal at AirTree VenturesFounder: Joe Forbes, Co-Founder of BiarriEcosystem: Stephanie Palmer-Derrien, Startups and Technology Editor at SmartCompanyTopics discussed include the latest funding news, Amazon's acquisition of Zoox, the SpaceX launch, the drop in startup valuations, and the boom in quantum computing. Listen in for thoughtful commentary on relevant startup and technology headlines by a fantastic panel.

Dan Phillips has spent most of his career building up Macquarie Capital's Venture Capital Group. Somewhat of a well-kept secret in the Australian startup ecosystem, in the past 25 years the Venture Capital Group has done 36 deals and deployed almost $600 million dollars of capital into some fantastic companies. The group has 11 companies currently in the portfolio.In this pod interview, Ian and Dan discuss:-The implications of COVID for Australian startups-Some success stories from the past 25 years-How their hands-on investing model works-The sectors and geographies the group focuses on-The strategies that lead to a 90%+ success rate with investments

Hello and welcome to the fourth edition of the OTPBD News Special. It’s our fortnightly podcast looking at the stories behind the headlines of the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.
Meet this week's panel:VC: Mike Dovey, Firemark VenturesFounder: Justin Webb, AgriWebbEcosystem: Imogen Baxter, Square Peg Capital
Topics we discuss:We discuss the flurry of new investments these past few weeks including; Doctor Anywhere, Judo Bank Qwilr, The Yield, and Verteva. We also cover Nura's long awaited Loops hitting the market, Atlassian acquisition of Halp, the UK's first week of zero coal power, and Twitter's announcement that employees can work from home forever.

Jeremy Liew was named by the Sydney Morning Herald as Silicon Valley’s “Most powerful Aussie”. One look at his track record, and it's no surprise why. Hailing from Perth, Jeremy is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. After spending the ‘90s and early 2000s working for web pioneers such as Netscape, AOL, CitySearch, and Interactive Corp, Jeremy joined Lightspeed in 2006 to help the firm, which traditionally was B2B-focused, expand to the consumer. He was the first VC to invest in Snapchat and has recently invested in direct-to-consumer shoe startup Rothy's, consumer goods maker The Honest Company and online lending platform Affirm.In this episode Jeremy...-Talks us through how his career led him to VC in Silicon Valley-Tells the story behind investing in Snap-Discusses best practices for choosing board members-Explains his criteria for investing in consumer tech-Shares tips for founders looking for the right venture partner match

Welcome to the third episode of the OTPBD News Special. It’s a fortnightly podcast looking at the stories behind the headlines of the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.
Meet this week's panel:VC: Daniel Petre, AirTree VenturesFounder: Antony Ceravolo, SineEcosystem: Rachael Neumann, AWS
Topics we discuss:Will superannuation funds continue to back Aussies VCs, the launch of the Governments COVIDSafe app and do we trust them with our data, how Elon Musk wiped $14bn of Tesla's stock with one tweet, and why founders like Jeff Bezos and RedBubble's Martin Hoskings stepping back in to take the reins in a crisis.

Jaime Bott is a partner at Sequoia Capital, managing their Talent Advisory function. She leads a talent team of 14 who help Sequoia's portfolio companies hire amazing talent, assemble a recruiting function, and build a board. Since Jaime started at Sequoia in 2010, talent evolved into an essential function for VC firms. 10 years ago there were less than 5 people in the Bay Area working for venture firms in a talent function; now there are at least 280 venture talent partners around the world.In this episode, Jaime shares her expansive startup talent expertise, touching on important topics like:* How to create and run functional boards * Driving diversity with recruitment * Common recruitment mistakes * How to build an in-house recruitment function * Tools, systems, and software for working in talent

Today we speak with Michael Pryor, co-founder, CEO and current Head of Product for Trello at Atlassian. Trello was acquired by Atlassian in 2017 for $425M and stands as Atlassian's largest-ever acquisition. Trello is one of many products developed by Fog Creek Software, a company Michael co-founded with Joel Spolsky back in 2000. Michael's co-founder pitched Trello at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2007 with the lofty goal of attracting 100 million users. Now, 13 years later, over 50 million people are signed up for Trello and that goal doesn't seem so lofty anymore.In addition to the birth and growth of Trello, this episode also focuses on how to effectively work remotely. Two thirds of Trello's workforce is remote, so Michael shares his tested strategies for how to build, manage, and grow a remote workforce.

Welcome to episode two of the OTPBD News Special. It’s a fortnightly podcast looking at the stories behind the headlines of the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.Meet this weeks panel:VC: Paul Naphtali, RampersandFounder: Rob Loewenthal, WhooshkaaEcosystem: Yolanda Redrup, AFRTopics we discuss:VC investment activity since Covid-19 hit, including latest Aussie startups to raise capital, Google and Apple join forces to fight coronavirus, the decline in podcasting listens and ad spending, and is this the end of WeWork and the SoftBank vision fund?

Nick Carter is one of Australia's leading energy experts; he is currently Senior Vice President of Energy Tech and Solutions at Macquarie in Australia. He joined Macquarie from Tesla, where he managed APAC business development for the Tesla energy software suite. Nick has a long career in the energy space and has also worked with electric vehicles at AGL Energy, environmental policy and strategy at Toyota, and engineering at General Motors.In this conversation with Nick, we talk about:-What's happening in energy markets-Major emerging trends in the energy sector-Virtual power plants-The role that startups and tech like AI will play in the future of energyIf you're a startup doing exciting things with alternative energy, apply to present at our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner with ARENA: http://bit.ly/RenewablesDinner.

Welcome to our first Innovation Bay News Special. It's a fortnightly podcast looking at the stories behind the headlines of the news that matters for the Australian and Kiwi startup ecosystem.
Meet the Panel: Alister Coleman (Tempus Partners), Emma Lo Russo (Digivizer), Fleur Brown (TechSydney, Launch Group)
Topics discussed include how are startups faring in these tough times, what is government doing to support the ecosystem, what are some companies (or trends) that are doing well. Plus a look at some of the news that you may have missed.
We hope you enjoy it. Any feedback or suggestions please do let us know.

In this episode, Phaedon chats with Luke Anear, founder and CEO of SafetyCulture. Luke founded SafetyCulture in his garage in Townsville back in 2004 and has gone on to scale the company globally, attract thousands of customers from a wide range of industries and complete millions of inspections with SafetyCulture's iAuditor app. The last time we interviewed Luke was October 2017. Since the last time we spoke:1. Luke has grown the team from around 140 people to just over 360. 2. The customer base grew from 11,500 to 27,000 customers 3. Safety Culture's market valuation has grown to $1B

In this conversation, we dive into many different aspects of scaling up a business including Luke's shifting responsibilities as CEO, maintaining culture throughout growth, building a board, establishing a recruitment function, the importance of having a coach, and making customer engagement a central focus. We know you'll enjoy hearing about this dynamic founder's journey.

February 2020 saw the launch of new venture-building entity X15 Ventures, part of the CBA group.Ian sat down with Toby Norton-Smith the new Managing Director of X15 Ventures to chat aboutlaunching the initiative and what this will look like in the future.Toby oversees the portfolio of ventures in development and in market. He’s been at CBA for 5years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch ofnew ventures like Beemit. Prior to this, Toby led a Fintech business in the wealth managementspace.X15 are looking for entrepreneurs, to present, receive funding and work in a derisk environment,to scale quicker; with support, guidance and access to the CBA customer base and distributionnetworks.Many of this new team have felt the pain of creating a company. Toby goes into what it was liketo be in the creation team for Beemit; spinning a technology team out of CBA core and how theywere set up off stack to get them away from everyday business and start building in a verydifferent way. They moved fast and broke things. Toby reveals that when you’ve been throughthat pain a few times and you passionately believe that there is more value that you can unlockfor customers this is where an asset like X15 can help you, with their assets they wanted to finda more repeatable and scalable solution.Join us on 23 April for a breakfast event which will dive into X15 and answer questions as wellas introduce us to the first founders in X15 Ventures.On this episode Toby tells us introduces X15, and tells us where this new CBA venture-building entity hopes to go. Settle in, get comfy and have a listen!

In this episode, Ian sits down with one of the leading figures in the Australia startup ecosystem. Sally-Ann Williams is the CEO of Australia's founding deep tech incubator, Cicada Innovations. Prior to taking over as CEO at Cicada in 2019, Sally-Ann spent 12 years working her way up to the exec level at Google Australia. As an Executive Program Manager at Google, she was responsible for leading Google’s efforts in entrepreneurship and startup engagement, research collaborations with universities and CS and STEM education & outreach. Alongside her work at Google Sally-Ann helped found StartupAUS, a non-for-profit organisation with a vision to make Australia one of the best places in the world to build a tech startup.Sally-Ann's north star is making innovation the driving force of Australia's economic future. That's why she left Google: to get people all around Australia to understand the importance of innovation. Her first step? Taking Cicada out of the shadows.Some of the highlights of the discussions include:* Some of the greatest success stories coming out of Cicada's incubator * Her plan for taking Cicada out of the shadows * What she learned from her time at Google * and how people working in innovation and technology need to bring the rest of Australia along on the journey

You don't want to miss this conversation with one of the most important voices in the Aussie startup world.

Failure is a topic few entrepreneurs are willing to talk about but many need to hear about. You won't find anyone in the startup ecosystem who talks as openly and eloquently about failure as Jodie Fox. Jodie is an exceptional founder who built an incredible business in Shoes of Prey, the former cult-fashion startup which allowed women to customise their own shoes. A banking and finance lawyer by trade and a dedicated creative, Shoes of Prey was a perfect nexus of the corporate and creative worlds for Jodie.Shoes of Prey was considered a global leader and innovator in mass-customisation and on-demand manufacturing. A vertically integrated business that raised over US$27 million in funding, and with millions of shoes designed, Shoes of Prey changed the way the retail industry thought about product and manufacturing. This popular Aussie startup was founded in 2009 with the vision that personalisation and customisation were the future of retail. Unfortunately, after 10 years of being in business, Shoes of Prey went into liquidation early 2019.In this episode, Jodie talks us through the highs and lows of her journey with poise and vulnerability, specifically shedding light on the importance of mental health for entrepreneurs. She also discusses her new book, "Reboot: Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Starting a Global Business", which was released in November. You don't want to miss this insightful, powerful pod episode.

This week, Ian is joined by Hannah Field from Tempus Partners. Tempus are “investing in the next generation of impossible,” with their long term approach to investment allowing them to delve into tech solutions that convention may say are impossible yet to them, are profoundly possible.Hannah’s road to becoming an investor with Tempus may not fall into the category of ‘conventional’. Hannah got her start as a semi-professional violinist and from there, took a really interesting journey throughout different industries across the globe. Ian and Hannah dive into each terrific position she has held from Boston to California to Dublin to Sydney.In her mid-20s with a “compelling drive to do something different, bigger...raise my ambition levels!” she quit her job at the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, drove cross-country and found herself in California with music provider Pandora. Being the early 2010s, music streaming was still in its initial stages. However, predicting a less than positive trajectory for Pandora, she moved to a position in online revenue operations with file sharing platform, Dropbox. After only one year she was selected to help instigate the company’s international profile with a move to Dublin. In eleven months their initial team of seven grew to seventy - a huge feat! Hannah admits that in achieving this she was “probably working at 200%.”With Ian, Hannah speaks about her time at Canva and the importance of company values, her stint as a recruiter, the interesting hiring process at Tempus, some of the top companies in their portfolio, and ideas for tackling the extraordinarily limited female representation in the investment field. This 75th episode of Open The Pod Bay Doors truly burns through a lot of topics; grab a snack, get comfy and have a listen!

This week on #OPTPBD Ian is joined by Rick Baker, partner with Blackbird Ventures. Founded in 2012, Blackbird is a venture capital fund with a vision to accelerate and champion the most ambitious founders. Their portfolio includes an impressive line-up including; Canva, CultureAmp, Zoox and RedBubble. Prior to breaking new ground with Blackbird, Rick was busy running the venture portfolio at MLC where he invested half a billion dollars into venture capital. He also cofounded two software companies, spent some time in the UK and in Silicon Valley, but is now happily back in Sydney as Australia’s startup ecosystem truly gathers momentum.In this fascinating and open discussion with Ian, Rick takes us through Blackbird’s ‘Secondary Strip Sale’ and their hugely successful Fund One from 2013 which drew $30million from 97 investors. This was an enormous feat for the time which now sees them as Canva’s biggest investor. He also shares Blackbird’s philosophy of splitting their investments between classic software marketplaces and “weird stuff,” like autonomous vehicles and lab-grown meats. As Ian puts it, they’ve “done some weird shit,” but it works! Their lack of fear of truly grassroots ideas distinguishes Blackbird from others in the Australian VC field. Rick discloses that his team are passionate about investing in the “science non-fiction,” ideas that seem improbable but when looked at closely, are imminently doable.Blackbird is now entering its 8th year of a 10-year fund. Rick talks with Ian about their hopes to expand Blackbird’s footprint in the future, having just opened an office in Auckland and building on their team of 19.Tune into this captivating conversation to hear more of the Blackbird story and listen to the advice Rick offers to those seeking investments. We thoroughly enjoyed this talk and we know you will too, listen today!

This week on #OTPBD Ian talks with Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Chrome, Comms and Photos at Google. Of the 9 Google products that have reached over 1 billion users, Anil is in charge of 2 of them, Photos and Chrome.Anil shares his incredible journey, beginning with founding D2L, a successful online education startup in Canada, through his struggles with a string of other less successful ventures, to a big move from North America to Australia that ultimately led to a spot at Google.While he initially saw Google as a temporary pit stop on his entrepreneurial journey, Anil found that his attempts to get fired actually led to a series of promotions that led him to becoming one of the most senior and successful product leaders in Australia...and the world. Uncover the lessons Anil has learned from his failures, the importance of alignment at Google, and how he manages a global team while being based in Australia.Anil’s story is one of perseverance and product excellence that you won’t want to miss.

This week on Ep72 of #OTPBD, we’re diving deep into seed investing with the founding team of Tidal Ventures. Founded by Grant McCarthy, Andrea Kowalski, and Wendell Keuneman, Tidal Ventures is a new institutional seed-focused VC firm hitting the Australian market, aiming to fill the void between Angel and Series A funding. The team has incredible collective experience working and investing in tech, with resume highlights of the founders including Yahoo, Bailador Capital, and Atlassian. Grant, Andrea, and Wendell use their respective commercial, investment, and product expertise to take the companies they invest in on the journey from seed to Series A funding.This impressive trio share key insights about seed phase investments, as well as how they evaluate investment opportunities, and what they look for in a founder. Furthermore, the co-founders divulged their own team dynamics, preparing businesses for international expansion, differences between the Australian and American VC markets, and the venture platform they’re building to deliver value-adding services to founders.The success of the venture industry has allowed VC firms to invest larger amounts of capital at later stages of companies. While we're seeing an increase in the number of tech startups, with roughly 5,000 early-stage companies operating in Australia, we're also seeing a decrease in the volume of capital being deployed at the seed stage. Tidal Ventures is filling this gap in the ecosystem, developing the companies they invest in to become investable by large VC firms at the next stage.Tune in for an enriching talk with the Tidal team to learn a lot about seed phase investment and how VCs can deliver value to their founders.

This week we are releasing #Ep71 of #OTPBD with Lucy Liu, President and Co-founder of Airwallex. Airwallex is building global financial infrastructure to help modern internet companies grow, by offering end-to-end solutions for businesses to move money programmatically at a large scale. Lucy is an incredibly successful and inspiring founder who was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Asia, in 2017. Airwallex was founded to solve the problems surrounding global payments. Lucy shares Airwallex's founding story - from a coffee shop to Australia’s fastest growing billion dollar startup. Airwallex also recently achieved unicorn status in March and is the third Australian company to do so (after Atlassian and Canva).In this pod, Lucy discusses Airwallex’s commendable competitive strategy. It is quite impressive how they worked around partnering and competing with banks at the same time by liasioning with different departments within the banks. Having already launched Airwallex globally, Lucy shares great insight and parallels within different markets. Lucy states, “In general, South East Asia is quite protective because they’re promoting innovation domestically.” Lucy also thinks that the UK and US markets are highly standardized and mature in comparison. Among other things, the conversation also ventures into startup culture and contrasts amongst the passion of Co-founders and employees. We found Lucy’s perspective on startup - investor dynamics refreshing and agreeable - they don’t tend to perceive that VCs are obligated to volunteer to help.We absolutely enjoyed this talk with this brilliant founder and we hope you do too! Tune in now to discover an exciting founder journey and get inspired.

On this week’s OTPBD - EP70, we’re happy to have Dylan Lawrence, General Manager (Investment) at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) as our guest. After partnering together for our annual VC conference in New Zealand, Venture Downunder, it was great to catch up with Dylan and spend some time learning more about New Zealand’s tech startup ecosystem.NZTE is a government agency designed to support companies to grow bigger, better, and faster—which in turn benefits the New Zealand economy and its citizens. As a result, they play a crucial role in the support of founders and the startup ecosystem in New Zealand. One of New Zealand’s biggest challenges is their geographic positioning. To quote Dylan, “A lot of countries are small, and a lot of countries are distant, but we’re the only country in the world that’s small and distant”.The New Zealand startup scene is flourishing with ingenious and innovative startups rising every day; however, these startups need to expand to international markets in order to scale and compete with global giants, which is where NZTE can play an important role. Dylan observes that it’s important for founders to understand the four Cs: Culture, connectedness, capabilities, and capital. Many NZ startups struggle with the second C, connectedness, because tapping into offshore markets, and growing and selling products offshore is tricky as a result of New Zealand’s geography.We wrapped up with Dylan’s career journey into government, and his take on the Maori economy. We learned a lot in this pod, and we hope you will too! Tune in now.

This week on #OTPBD EP69, we’re delighted to host Paul Bassat, Co-founder at Square Peg Capital. His previous founder experience at Seek and current VC journey makes this episode’s discussion very captivating! Square Peg Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in high-potential businesses in Australia, Israel & South East Asia with a specific focus on series A & series B. Square Peg has made around 35 investments to date and their portfolio includes some groundbreaking startups including Canva, Athena Home Loans, Deputy & more.In this pod, we explore the dynamics between VCs & portfolio companies. Paul states, “Founders are like the captain of a sports team and a VC is like a coach.” Having walked the path of a startup founder himself, Paul shares great insights on how VCs need to support founders and act in the best interests of their portfolio companies. As a VC, one gets to be a part of plenty of groundbreaking ventures, but as a startup, the founder has just one venture that they are (normally) extremely passionate about. We further explore Paul’s experience at Seek and him stepping down in 2011, and then founding Square Peg Capital. Paul has a deep understanding of the Australian tech startups ecosystem and he believes that there is a lot more that has to be improved in this space. He shares his views around the prevalent diversity issue in tech startups and VCs.We conclude the pod with a fire round and get to know Paul’s informal side! Tune in for a unique episode featuring first-hand experience of founding a startup and a remarkable VC.

This week on Ep 68 of #OTPBD, we have the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson & Serguei Mourachov. The purpose of Slack is simply helping everyone get their work done. Slack is a one stop communication platform for organisations to work collaboratively and with high efficiency. Cal’s founder journey is definitely one of the adventurous ones. Slack was born out of personal experiences and need felt by the founders themselves. ThTo summarise the making of Slack, the founders were working towards building an online gaming startup and created Flickr along the way. The founders needed to collaborate effectively & communicate from different cities. After realizing that there was no specific platform to do so, they built one themselves. They wanted to make the platform available to public and turned the product into ‘Slack’, as we now know it. Cal is extremely humble and potentially very relatable for other founders. In this podcast, he shares the difficult lessons he learned when his gaming startup failed. They had to lay off 40-50 employees in the process, which is one of the toughest struggles of being a startup founder. He says: It was our own fault; we were unable to turn our vision into reality. He stresses on how crucial it is for organisations to adapt to change and be agile. He shares his take on IPOs, organisational transparency, future challenges for Slack, Australian startups ecosystem, strategic alignment and much more.This is an incredible startup journey and we are so grateful to have Cal on #OTPBD. Tune in now to dive deep into the insider story of a multi-billion-dollar tech giant!

This week we are releasing #Ep67 of #OTPBD with Damien Mahoney, Co-founder & CEO of Stackla. Stackla is a content-marketing platform founded in 2012. It is a classic example of how an Aussie startup successfully ventured into the great US market. It is a revolutionary platform enabling all types of B2C businesses to generate authentic, trusted and dynamic user-generated content. Stackla covers a diverse spectrum of sectors including travel, retail, media & entertainment, etc. They pride in possessing a prestigious customer base which includes big brand names like McDonalds, Lenovo and Visa.Damien shares plenty of worthwhile advice for founders looking to take their startups to the next level. Damien’s approach with Stackla was always taking things one step at a time. He says, “It was always about building upon the foundations that we built the building upon and the progress that we just made and trying to take the business to the next level.”His perspective is quite refreshing which portrays that one can still succeed with a mindset different from typical entrepreneurial ideologies.In this pod, we also discuss how Aussie startups vary from Silicon Valley startups. We dig into the reasons why it is a struggle for local startups to raise capital in the US. Stackla went through 40-50 venture capital meetings for funding and didn’t find much success in the American market. The Silicon Valley investors generally look for something extremely disruptive and Aussie startups have more of humbler visions and pitches compared to their American counterparts. Damien talks about one of the key challenges’ startups face- hiring. He emphasizes on how strategic hires can bring structure and immense growth to businesses. He sheds some light on day-to-day of startups and shares his own share of experiences.As per usual, we conclude this pod with a fire-round and get to know this talented founder a bit more. We hope you enjoy this pod. Tune in below!

In line with our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner, we were thrilled to host Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Established in 2012, ARENA’s purpose is to accelerate Australia’s shift to affordable and reliable renewable energy.Being in an influential organisation such as ARENA, Darren has a very interesting perspective on the future of energy. His knowledge and his passion for renewable energy truly reflects in his words. In this ep, Darren shares some striking data and insights into the renewable energy sector and where Australia stands in the whole picture. He emphasizes especially on the severity and impact of climate change and explains how in this day and age, renewable energy can make us more adaptable to the current havoc and challenge the status quo.Previous to ARENA, Darren was also an entrepreneur and founded two businesses. In 2007, he co-founded the startup ‘Sumwise’ which is an advanced online spreadsheet platform (and had even pitched at one of our past Founder Dinners!). Following sumwise, he was also the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Power, which provides competitive solar feed-in tariffs for households in NSW and QLD.ARENA has invested over $1.3 billion in grant funding to 469 innovative projects, leveraging over $3.8 billion in private investment across a range of renewable energy technologies. It is an organisation making an honest impact in empowering upcoming startups in this industry. This year in March, ARENA funded a renewable energy sensor startup ‘Fulcrum3D’. The startup secured just shy of $1 million for two of its projects, focused on forecasting for wind and solar farms. Darren takes us through ARENA’s ‘A-Lab-incubate’ which is their outstanding accelerator program. This exhibits the organisation’s role in improving the Australian startup ecosystem.We hope you enjoy this thought-provoking episode with Darren!If you’re a founder building a startup in the renewable energy space, make sure you apply to pitch to sector-interested investors at our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner on October 8th. Applications close on August 25th! Apply here: https://www.coventured.com/programs/view/254If you’re an investor that would like to attend, register your spot here: https://innovationbay.com/event/renewable-energy-founder-dinner/

Our guest this week on #OTPBD is the CEO, CTO and Co-Founder of Deputy, Ashik Ahmed. His success story is one of the most inspiring ones in the Australian startup ecosystem. Ashik has built a striving business which sustains on its excellent product. In this pod, he shares his entrepreneurial journey and valuable life lessons that he learnt along the way.Deputy was founded to solve a problem affecting over two thirds of the world’s working population who are hourly workers or shift workers. To put it straightforwardly, it is a workforce management tool which aims to simplify staff management. It is this concept, that the product was created to make an impact and an actual difference in the lives of businesses and the common people, sets it apart from the rest. Ashik has been driven by passion solely, having no previous entrepreneurial experience or family history of the same. His long-term vision of Deputy is that ‘every shift worker which is 2/3rds of the world’s working population uses Deputy in the long run.’Ashik talks about the challenges and struggles he faced while building Deputy alongside Steve Shelley, his former employer and Co-Founder at Deputy. Ashik shares his take on organisational culture, which is one of the several essentialities for businesses to be successful. To quote him, “Culture isn’t free food or yoga or dogs at work”.His learning journey is phenomenal and it is exciting for us to get to know him personally through the pod. We truly hope you enjoy listening to this enthusiastic and rising entrepreneur!

AFR’s tech editor, Paul Smith knows the in’s and out’s of Australia’s startup & tech sector. He’s not our usual founder or investor-type guest on the pod. However, as a regular reporter on the ecosystem, and a genuinely knowledgeable and well-versed guest, we were delighted to host him this week on #OTPBD and discuss media exposure for startups, the digital shift in journalism, the implications of new technologies and more!Having previously worked for Fairfax in London, Paul moved to Australia and has been working for the AFR since 2002. As an experienced journalist, we quickly deep-dived into one of the biggest ‘needs’ listed by startups in the 2018 Startup Muster Report – Media Exposure. From here, Paul discussed the importance and power of storytelling particularly with regards to pitching your story to journalists.The landscape of journalism has changed immensely throughout Paul’s career which led to the discussion of Paul’s perspectives on journalism in the digital age. Paul mentioned, ‘the industry trained people in the early days of the internet to expect content/news to be free, where everyone put all content up online.’ Whilst a number of individuals still pay subscriptions to read valid news sources (AFR, Guardian etc.), people are looking up free content on social media and online publications.We continued the discussion onto the implications of the new technologies particularly the rise of automation, and its impact on future jobs. ‘Any tech company you talk about automation will say, it’s not replacing work, it’s improving work – but it’s definitely not going to be true in every instance. We can’t deny that it’s not going to happen. But we need to look at what does re-training look like, or a universal wage?’Finally, we ventured into tech in the political landscape – the recent passing of the AA and encryption Bill, Ed Husic’s role in the tech sector and the potential for a new government (as this was ep was recorded pre-election).Once again, we were thrilled to speak with Paul this week and hope you enjoyed this episode!

All the way from Sweden, our guest this week on #OTPBD is the first employee and former CTO of Spotify, Andreas Ehn! Whilst Andreas’ early education and career path started off in tech and engineering, he had always had an interest in business and entrepreneurship, which has made for an exciting and impressive career so far.Spotify has become one of the most popular music-streaming platforms of all time with over 200 million users to date. In Spotify’s formative years, Andreas brought together a world class technical team that designed and built the music-service product, however, the original genesis of this widely used app is an interesting startup story (and has much respect to timing). In a large part, illegal file-sharing company Pirate Bay (also Swedish born) helped paved a path for Spotify’s success in the music industry. Record labels were facing a time where piracy was at large more than ever, and at the time, Spotify’s music solution was the most promising to labels, and cheap and easily accessible to consumers.Post-Spotify, Andreas then co-founded and was CTO of his own business in 2011, Wrapp, a purchases and customer loyalty app which early this year was acquired by Meniga. Later on, he then became an active investor, with 15 investments typically early-stage. Andreas is currently a global Venture Partner with Antler, a global startup generator and early-stage VC that works by selecting talented individuals looking to start a business, connecting them with the right co-founder as well as a network of advisors worldwide.We’re thrilled to have Andreas on #OTPBD and hope you enjoy listening to this Ep!

This week, we’re excited to share a very special episode featuring our first ever ‘trio’ on the pod who discussed the impact, role, and necessity of Australian startup boards. Ian sat down with Amanda Price, Head of KPMG High Growth Ventures, Anthony Sochan, Partner at Think & Grow and Martin Dalgleish, Partner at Morpheus Ventures, for an in-depth exploration about company boards - discussing everything from how to create successful boards, to tackling board diversity, to when to start creating boards? Recently, KPMG High Growth Ventures and Think & Grow teamed together recently to produce a brilliant and comprehensive report titled The Startup Board Report, interviewing 26 startup board directors globally and surveying over 70 Australian startups. Some key stats they found include:* 40% of late-stage startups don’t have an independent board member * 50% of startups compensate board members with cash or equity * 76% of startups don't have a diversity target in place * 65% of startups don’t recruit board members through a formal process

We’re very passionate about the importance of startup boards. Our GM, Sian Priest, co-founded Get on Board with the aim of connecting more women with board opportunities, so this is definitely a topic we resonate well with. For founders that are yet to put together a board, or aren’t sure where to start, this is a fantastic Ep that’ll help get you started. We hope you enjoy!

Recognised as somewhat of a startup celebrity, Steve Baxter is an entrepreneur, investor, and best known as one of the (more sharkier) sharks on Australia’s Shark Tank. We were excited to have Steve this week on #OTPBD to look back on his early telco & internet startup successes, deep dive into his considerable career, and listen to his strong opinions on government & politics, climate change and more.A short spoiler about this Ep. As you may know, Steve is very direct and can be sometimes outspoken on topics, which was no special case for this episode. As a climate change skeptic, Steve definitely put up a thought-provoking debate with Ian on the topic of clean energy - definitely worth the listen! Steve’s career started at the young age of when he joined the army and was recruited as a solider with contract for 9 years. At 23, he and his partner took out a home loan for $11,000, which became used to launch his first startup, an internet service provider, SE Net from one of the spare rooms from his rented Adelaide home. The business became subsequently acquired by Ozemail under the stewardship of its founding Director and previous Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.Steve co-founded his next startup in 2001, PIPE networks, an ASX-listed provider of wholesale telecoms infrastructure, which exited to TPG Group for $373M. Later on in 2012, having co-founded River City Labs and advocating on behalf of entrepreneurs, a few meetings opened him up to the opportunity to be on Shark Tank which he took for more publicity, and shared with us his interesting experiences on show. As Queensland’s second ever Chief Entrepreneur between Oct 2017-2018, Steve focused on broadening the startup ecosystem outside of Brisbane to more rural/regional areas but flying angels and investors to meet founders at events outside of the city. Currently, Steve’s also an investor at VC, Transition Level Investments, which has had 29 direct investments with 22 in the fund over 6 years. Steve is definitely a smart, opinionated, and valuable member of the startup ecosystem. We hope you enjoy this ep!

On first thought, a Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of a superannuation fund seems an unlikely guest for Open The Pod Bay Doors. However, you'll soon hear how Sam Sicilia, Hostplus’ CIO of 10 years, has become a driver for investment into VC, and is overall passionate about tech innovation for the future prosperity of the Australian economy.We were excited to have Sam on the pod who gave us some great insights into Hostplus’ investments. Last year, Hostplus invested over $1 billion into venture capital, making the fund Australia’s largest VC investor, with capital into Blackbird Ventures ($160M), The IP Group ($100M), Artesian ($135M) & Main Sequence Ventures ($70M) to name a few. As one of Australia’s largest superfunds with almost $40B under management, Hostplus has become one of the most influential figures in the Australian tech venture capital sceneSam also discussed how their first dedicated VC investment (into Blackbird Ventures) came about, and delved into the importance of relationships with fund managers, private equity managers & venture capital managers. He also talked about why other superfunds should start investing more into VC, and gave some valuable advice for anyone looking to raise funds from superannuation companies.We were delighted to have had Sam on the pod, and hope you enjoy this episode!

On today’s pod, we feature an exceptional female entrepreneur, who’s also an investor, advisor, board member, and mum of 3. We’re excited to celebrate International Women’s Day this year with a brilliant guest, Jane Martino.Melbourne local, Jane Martino has had an impressive career so far, and she’s only just getting started. Recently appointed as Executive Director - Ventures for VC firm, Light Warrior, Jane has a passion for investing and advising early stage ventures and businesses particularly in the areas of health/wellness, consumer, retail & FMCG and those with a social impact.Previous to this, Jane was CEO of Unlockd, which raised $40M, and also built a number of dynamic businesses, two of which had successful exits: Undertow Media, acquired by Bastion Collective, and Shout, acquired by ANZ Bank. Her third business, the non-for-profit, Smiling Mind, a program centred around delivering free online mindfulness meditation programs, has now over 3 million users globally.In this ep, Jane shares some excellent advice on getting things done all whilst juggling being an investor and spending time with her family. She highlights the importance of meditation and mindfulness, a daily practice for her which became not only the inspiration for Smiling Mind, but something Jane championed for school curriculums.Jane also shared some of the key things she looks for as an investor, investing with Light Warrior, plus discussed some of the attributes she believes is important for founders to have. If you're in need of a little inspiration and advice, Jane is a delightful guest and a great leader to learn from.

On today's pod we're talking all things esports with Dave Harris founder of Guinevere Capital.What are esports we hear you say? Esports refers to organised competitive gaming among professional players, the most popular games are generally team-based multi-player games. Just a bunch of dudes playing video games? Think again, the esports industry has grown at a tremendous pace over the past few years. According to Newzoo, total eSports revenue jumped from $493 million in 2016 to an estimated $900 million in 2018!Dave is the founder and Managing Director of Guinevere Capital, which owns and operates many of Australia's biggest esports teams. Hailing from a background of commercial success in "traditional" sports like Rugby League, Dave has brought a huge degree of professionalism to the emerging world of esports.Guinevere owns several teams such as the LG Dire Wolves (League of Legends), the Sydney Drop Bears (Overwatch) and Supa-Stellar (a female Counter Strike team). Recently Guinevere completed a deal to acquire Excel, a UK-based League of Legends team, along with a coveted slot in the League of Legends European Championships. Are you still with us?Thus is a fascinating look into a fascinating industry. As anyone with teenagers in their life will attest, the rise of esports as a mainstream pastime (and indeed industry) is unprecedented in terms of its participation and overall growth rate. Dave brings a unique, insiders perspective to this, and helps unpack the goings on in this strange new world.

In the latest Ep of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Phaedon spoke with the brilliant Aussie entrepreneur, Geoff McQueen, co-founder of Accelo, and Executive Director of the Aussie Founder Network based in Silicon Valley. Geoff is one of those founder’s that truly knows how to grow a business. In this episode, Geoff gives us some fantastic insights into capital raising in the US, and what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley.Born and raised in Wollongong, Geoff dropped out of the University of Wollongong to focus on running his first business in 2000, a full spectrum digital agency called Internetrix. Within in this field, Geoff saw a problem around SMEs and their internal business management, and after performing lots of customer development around an idea, Accelo was born in 2009. In May 2011, Geoff was invited to exhibit at Google IO - Google's annual developers conference, and in July that same year, decided to take the plunge to move and launch Accelo in the US without any capital, and running on a little bit of revenue.From here, Geoff talked to us about how he managed to raise capital from investors in Silicon Valley and New York, built offices in SF and Denver, and grew their base team in Wollongong, plus manage the team of over 100 globally, with his three other co-founders.Geoff is also one of the founding members of the Aussie Founder Network, a community of Australian founders, investors and industry advisors, based out of Silicon Valley. Their mission is to support, build and elevate the role and impact of the Aussie tech community, globally.This is great conversation and we are thrilled to have had Geoff as our guest on the pod!

Ben Keighran is an intelligent and down-to-earth founder, advisor and investor, who knows all about growing a great business and what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley. Phaedon Opened the Pod Bay Doors to Ben so we could talk about Caffeine, a social broadcasting platform for gaming, sport and entertainment, which Ben co-founded in 2016. We also deep-dived into Ben's perennial entrepreneurial career. He moved from Sydney to San Francisco in 2007 where he raised $US6.5 for his social media company, BluePulse, and founded the app discovery/search engine service, Chomp, which became acquired by Apple for $50M. In this Ep, Ben offers valuable advice about raising money in Silicon Valley, having recently closed a huge $146m in VC funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Lachlan Murdoch's 21st Century Fox. Ben epitomises the word entrepreneur and is an overall fantastic guest to learn from.

Have trouble understanding Quantum Physics? Don’t worry - it's hard to get a grasp on the theory. This week on the pod however, we spoke with an incredibly fascinating guest who articulately explained quantum mechanics in layman's terms, and described how his product is disrupting the future of quantum computers.We #OTPBD to Professor, Michael J. Biercuk: quantum physicist and technologist at the University of Sydney, Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council and founder & CEO of Q-CTRL. Q-CTRL is an intuitive cloud platform that uses quantum control theory to solve the hardest problems facing quantum technology, improving hardware performance and accelerating pathways to useful quantum computers and other technologies. Utilising professionally developed tools, Q-CTRL puts deep expertise in quantum control into individuals hands.Michael’s research as a Quantum Physicist has been recognised with accolades including the Eureka Prize for Outstanding Young Researcher (2015), selection as one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s 100 Most influential people and award of the Australian Government’s [National Measurement Institute] NMI Prize for Excellence in Measurement Science. He was part of an international team whose work developing a new quantum-powered technology was described as the #8 “World-changing” experiment by BBC Focus. His team’s achievements have been featured in The Economist, The New York Times, Forbes, Wired, and a host of other major media outlets.Deep-dive into a great discussion on the future of a new generation of quantum technology, and how it will disrupt industries worldwide.

We're pleased to welcome Kevin Baum and Justin Webb, cofounders of AgriWebb on this week's episode of Open The Pod Bay Doors.AgriWebb is Australia's market leader of software for livestock farmers, designed to “digitise the notebooks that sat in the top pockets of Australian farmers". The platform digitises record-keeping and takes audit and compliance data to help farmers make better decisions and improve productivity.Justin Webb and Kevin Baum, along with their other cofounder John Fargher started the business in 2014, with a mission to fundamentally transform global cattle and sheep production with their farm management software that delivers profitability, provenance and sustainability across the supply chain in the face of an impending global food crisis.Globally, AgriWebb is now used on 2800 farms, 1700 of which are in Australia, and is also expanding rapidly into the UK and Brazil. The company has grown to around 40 employees split between Australia & UK, and they've successfully raised over $21M in funding, most recently raising $14 million from the UK-based agriculture investment company Wheatsheaf Group.Kevin has extensive experience in entrepreneurship, technical program management and is an expert in technology commercialisation, having worked around the world to develop innovative research into scalable opportunities. Kevin is a winner of numerous entrepreneurship awards including: IEEE President’s Change the World Foundation Prize, The Skoll Venture Award and The GSVC Intel Innovation Prize. Kevin earned a BA from Stanford in Biology and his MBA (Dean’s List), as well as a MA in Environmental Science from Oxford University.Justin’s family history in livestock production inspired the concept and foundation of AgriWebb. A serial entrepreneur in financial management, Justin has founded, built and sold 3 quantitative Hedge Funds with successful exits to Macquarie Bank, Citadel & Westpac. Justin also founded PacWealth Capital; a $4Bn asset advisory firm in the South Pacific. He also served as a Director and Head of Retail Client Business, Private Banks & Alternative Investments for the ANZ franchise of BlackRock Inc. Justin earned an AB (honours) in Economics and Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and holds an MBA with distinction in asset management from Oxford University where he was on the Dean’s List and the OBA Scholar.This is a great discussion that touches a number of difficulties startups are likely to face: tackling international expansion and understanding global markets; managing teams on opposite sides of the globe; & allocating funds after raising capital.

Last week, we hosted a breakfast with Sarah Leary, the phenomenal founder of US-unicorn, Nextdoor, as they launched their social network for neighbourhood communities in Australia. For those not lucky enough to attend, fear not, Ian brought along his recording gear so we could capture Sarah’s amazing story and experience for building great communities and share with you.Nextdoor was launched in the US in 2011 as a social network for people to interact with others who live in their physical neighborhoods. Neighbourhoods across the US rely on the platform to engage with their community, and in the past year, the service became available in several countries across Europe.What many people don’t know, is that before Nextdoor’s success, Sarah and her co-founders Nirav Tolia, Prakash Janakiraman and David Wiesenhad already tried building a startup. It was called ‘Fanbase,’ a platform for sports fans to congregate and share information, and it was live for 2 years before Sarah realised that it didn’t have real potential for growth. Having raised money from investors already, they had to decide whether they would return the money or put it towards a new idea.In 2010, Sarah & her co-founders decided it was time to come up with new ideas. One of these ideas started with a pothole problem. Cofounder Nirav, had a pothole on his street, and he didn’t know how to get it fixed or where to start. This small problem, sparked an idea around creating more connectivity in communities, so the team created Nextdoor to tackle this problem in neighbourhoods.They dedicated time to validating the idea in San Francisco neighbourhoods and found that people really seemed to crave connection to other people & community, with the data showing that 21% of Americans couldn’t name their neighbours, and 27% didn’t know who actually lives next door. Since its launch, Nextdoor is now used by 84% of neighbourhoods across the US, over a range of 170k communities, and has recently launched in new markets in the Netherlands, UK, Germany and now Australia! Sarah emphasises that patience is required when building communities and how important constant customer validation is as you build a product that people want to use. She also stresses how vital it is to have investors aligned with your long term vision. This is a fascinating conversation with a truly exceptional leader building a global business with a purpose. If you haven't already signed up to Nextdoor do it now - https://au.nextdoor.com

Welcome to episode 52 of Open The Pod Bay Doors. This week we dive into career and experience of Michelle Deaker, Managing Parter at OneVentures. The firm has $330M in funds under management. Michelle serves on the investment committee of OneVentures three main Funds, leads the technology practice within the firm and is responsible for investor relations managing the supervisory boards of OneVentures funds.As well as being a VC, Michelle is also a scientist who double majored in Physics and Chemistry. Michelle has always had a passion for science, holding a Bachelor of Science (Honours 1st class), Master of Science a PhD (Applied Science), and her first role was in mineral physics at CSIRO. For Michelle, science teaches you how to learn.In the late nineties Michelle built an e-commerce store called Giftvouchers.com, which she started by owning every gift voucher domain name before turning it into one of the first Australian Fintech companies. Michelle raised $6.5M from HNW's to fund the venture, as they pivoted to B2B to manage 700M retailer gift cards across Australia. They sold the business in 2005 which was then acquired by a publicly listed UK company.Michelle spent the next year travelling back and forth to the UK and it was hear she got her first taste of angel investing, with UK business MyPay. This would lead her to launch the venture firm, OneVentures in 2006, a time when raising a fund was almost impossible. The firm has invested in 17 companies; recent investments include a nanopatch company, Vaxxas, that could be a game changer as it replaces needles for vaccinations and Smart Sparrow, which allows for adaptive lessons and rich media. It is now used by more than 200 institutions and has created hundreds of jobs. They’ve also currently achieved 3 exits with a couple more coming through in the pipeline.OneVentures is currently raising a $100m for Australia’s first venture debt fund and this year, will complete about 5 deals averaging a check size of $5-10m.Michelle is a trailblazer, being the first female founder of a venture fund in Australia, in fact according to Larry Marshall (CSIRO) she was at one point the only female founding venture partner in the southern hemisphere! Thankfully more women are entering the VC community. We really enjoyed our conversation with Michelle, one of Australia's great tech pioneers.

This week on the pod we are joined by cofounder and CEO of AgriDigital, Emma Weston.Former lawyer and experienced grain farmer Emma Weston co-founded AgriDigital in 2015, with the goal to solve the current problems facing the agricultural supply chains with blockchain technology.Emma experienced first hand the inefficiencies within the agricultural supply chain and is passionate about ensuring wheat farmers get paid fast and fairly. The solution, a platform that uses the blockchain to provide transparency around transactions to all participants in the supply chain and builds end-to-end transactional management from farmer to consumer.The company has rapidly grown in a few short years; from the cofounders (Emma, Bob McKay, and Ben Reid) and one engineer, to a team of almost 50 people, they launched the platform in 2017, have over 1800 user, and have processed around 3 million tonnes of grain through the platform.In early 2018, Square Peg Capital invested $5.5 million Series A funding round to help expansion plans into North America. Emma share her experience and top tips when pitching to investors.In 2017, Emma was recognised as the Female Fintech Leader of the Year in Australia and was also named a Top 25 Fintech Influencer by Finder.com.au. She is passionate about how agtech and fintech converge and ensuring democratic access to technology.On this episode Emma shares practical advice for entrepreneurs and start-ups on building a company to scale. She also shares the organisational and management strategies she uses when tackling big projects with her team. Emma is an incredible founder - open, honest, passionate, and focused on building a global Australian agtech business.

We're back with our second ‘Sunrise Island’ special of Open The Pod Bay Doors. A few weeks ago, the Innovation Bay team along with over 1000 founders, investors, students & enthusiasts, set-sail for the infamous Cockatoo Island, also known as, Sunrise Island.Blackbird Ventures annual conference was back, bigger and better than ever. The day long event featured inspiring keynote speakers, an abundance of workshops (powered by Zambesi), mentor sessions with Startmate, and plenty of opportunities to network. You could feel a real buzz on the island as the best of #startupaus caught up with old and new faces in the ecosystem.Sunrise is the celebration of Australian startup founders. Sunrise organiser and Blackbird Head of Community, Joel Connolly said it best. “It’s time to start celebrating startup founders in the same way we celebrate artists, sports heroes, and politicians.”In that same vein, these two episode strive to highlight and share the successes and learnings of founders and others within the vibrant community. And so, with mics-in-hand, Ian and Phaedon set out to speak with as many people as they could, interviewing the keynote speakers of the day and chatting with a bunch of Sunrise Island dwellers.In this episode we talked to main stage speakers:Sam Scilia: HostPlusPhaedon caught up with Sam Sicilia Chief Investment Officer at Super fund, Hostplus. Hostplus is Australia's biggest tech VC backer, Sam has almost deployed $1Billion into Australian venture capital, including Blackbird Ventures, Brandon Capital Carthona Capital, Main Sequence Ventures, and Square Peg Capital. Sam has developed a reputation as forward-thinking advocate focusing on tech-led innovation for the future prosperity of the Australian economy. Sam was kind enough to share Hostplus' ethos, his predictions for the market, particularly how we should expect to see more Super funds allocating funds to venture capital, as well as what Aussie startups are exciting him. On behalf of #startupaus we'd like to say thank you to Sam for the vote of confidence and for backing the industry!Tobi Pearce, SweatNow this is an incredible founder story. Ian grabbed Tobi Pearce before he hit the main stage to share his founder journey. Tobi and his fiancée Kayla Itsines are the founders of Sweat, a women's health and fitness content company. Tobi and Kayla were both personal trainers in Adelaide but they wanted to reach a larger audience all around the world. They have over 30 million dedicated users worldwide, have raised no external capital, over 100 employees, and are on track for $100 million in annual revenue! Tobi tells us about the tech systems they've built to help scale the business, how they are managing a much larger team, and the challenges of moving from 'hands-on founder' to strategic CEO. An amazing founder and business.Katherine McConnell, BrightKatherine is the founder and CEO of Brighte, Australia's leading on the spot finance platform for solar, batteries & your next home improvement. Brighte's growth and Katherine journey over the past 3 years is impressive, earlier in the year they announced a Series B funding round raised $18.5 million which included high profile investors AirTree, Grok Ventures and Skip Capital. Katherine talks candidly about the highs and lows of being a startup founder, does and don'ts when hiring, and how success changes as a business grows.We also stopped to chat familiar faces in the #startupaus community:Alex McCauley - StartupAusAndrea Gardiner - Jelix VenturesRhett Sampson - GT SystemsAdrian Mullen - NorbyWe hope you enjoy these special episodes from Sunrise Island. Thanks for having us Sunrise and we can't wait to return next year!

This week is the first of two ‘Sunrise Island’ special episodes of Open The Pod Bay Doors. A few weeks ago, the Innovation Bay team along with over 1000 founders, investors, students & enthusiasts, set-sail for the infamous Cockatoo Island, also known as, Sunrise Island.Blackbird Ventures annual conference was back, bigger and better than ever. The day long event featured inspiring keynote speakers, an abundance of workshops (powered by Zambesi), mentor sessions with Startmate, and plenty of opportunities to network. You could feel a real buzz on the island as the best of #startupaus caught up with old and new faces in the ecosystem.Sunrise is the celebration of Australian startup founders. Sunrise organiser and Blackbird Head of Community, Joel Connolly said it best. “It’s time to start celebrating startup founders in the same way we celebrate artists, sports heroes, and politicians.”In that same vein, in the next two episodes we strive to highlight and share the successes and learnings of founders and others within the vibrant community. And so, with mics-in-hand, Ian and Phaedon set out to speak with as many people as they could, interviewing the keynote speakers of the day and chatting with a bunch of Sunrise Island dwellers.In this episode we talked to main stage speakers:Laurie Yoler, Zoox:Phaedon caught up with Laurie (and the seagulls!) just before she hit the main stage. All the way from US, Laurie talked about how she became involved with Zoox, eventually joining their board of directors. She also discussed how she served as a founding board member of Tesla Motors, what it was like working with Elon, and shares some advice for founders on how to select their own board members. And most importantly tells us what makes a great founder.Cedar Anderson, FlowHive:With a unique solution to extracting honey, Cedar chatted with Phaedon about their one-of-a-kind beehive and how they’ve tackled their exponential growth and demand. Initially, Flowhive launched a campaign hoping to raise $70,000 for a custom injection mould. Instead, they ended up raising over $12 million and received nearly 25,000 orders from over 130 countries, and have already raised $14+ million for Flowhive 2. Cedar was kind enough to sit down with us for 20 minutes before he hit the main stage and share his amazing story and passion. Niki Scevak, Blackbird Ventures/Startmate:Ian chats with Niki Scevak, partner at Blackbird Ventures, the organisers of Sunrise Island. Blackbird invests in Australians with big ideas who want to be the best in the world. They provide equity capital for Seed, Series A and later stage. No cheque is too early. Hear from Niki how Sunrise is bigger and bolder than ever before, how the Startmate accelerator program was formed, and how the ecosystem is maturing. As well as great advice to all founders “The grander your ambition, the more likelier you are to succeed”.We also stopped to chat with a few favourites in the community:Joel Connolly - Blackbird VenturesRuby Jones - KPMG High Growth VenturesAndrew (teacher) - Mitchell High SchoolAndy Tsao - Silicon Valley BankNicola Farrell - muru-DKarthi Sepulohniam - Partners for GrowthMonica Wulf - Startup MusterJamie Pride - The Founder LabRohan Sood - ReinventureWe hope you enjoy this first episode of our Sunrise Island two-part special. Tune in for more next week.

This week, we ‘Open The Pod Bay Doors’ with Craig Blair, cofounder and managing partner of AirTree Ventures – a startup venture fund on a mission to invest in ambitious founders who are looking to transform industry’s with software.AirTree like to be on the journey with founder from the beginning, often writing the first cheque. The first fund in 2014 was $60M which they deployed in 2 years, making 24 investments; this included early cheques in some of Australia’s startup darlings, like Prospa and Canva. The fund is tracking well with all 24 businesses still operating.The second fund increased five-times to an incredible $250M in 2016, with 15 investments made so far. The larger fund has given AirTree more operating capital to deploy into support services like a talent function to service their portfolio companies to help them build great teams for growth. This model is common in the US and UK, but in Australia it’s still a novel concept due to the limited number of funds and their size. 60% of fund two has been deployed, with new early seed investments a low as $250k and follow on investments as large as $20M in later stages.Craig believe it’s never been easier to raise Seed round ($250-500K) in Australia, raising a post-Seed and Series A is becoming more challenging Funding is drying up globally – it’s getting harder to raise Seed-Series A. Recent years saw valuation corrections for some of the global Unicorns, meaning a lot of money has left the VC space. Craig's advice for those looking to get into VC is to ideally have founder or product experience – you need the knowledge of how to build team, raise money, operate well, and ship product to be able empathise with founders. Plus you need to develop your own thesis – think deeply about what you think the world will look like in the future.Prior to AirTree Ventures, Craig managed a $40M fund, Netus, with AirTree cofounder Daniel Petre and Alison Deans. It was acquired by Fairfax in 2012.Craig is a founder at heart. He’s founded a number of businesses, raised venture financing and achieved several exits. Craig founded Travelselect (1998) a venture-backed online travel company based in the UK that successfully exited to lastminute.com in 2002, Beamly Australia (2012) a TV second screen business backed by Comcast/NBC, Sky and Network Ten, and was founding Chairman of PetCircle (2012) – Australia’s leading subscription e-commerce player for pet owners. He’s spent as long in the startup world as anyone in this space.Craig recently returned from a 5 month family trip to the South of France - where he still closed a deal in a San Francisco-based company – tres bien! During this time Craig visited Station F, an enormous startup hub in Paris which is home to over 1000 startups, with every major VC and angel having a presence. He thinks a major startup prescient in Australia is vital to the evolution and strengthening of the ecosystem. The tech trends that Craig and AirTree are excited about are niche applications of AI software – recent investments include FluroSat (agtech) Earth AI (geology) They’re also looking at new platforms like crypto, robotics, quantum computing that wills interesting businesses built on top of them over the coming years.This is a great and clarifying conversation about the economics of VC funds, advice on how to get into venture, and the future trends in technology with someone who is as passionate as ever about helping founders. Thanks to Craig for sharing his deep knowledge and insights with us.

Last month, we visited the thriving ecosystem in Adelaide, and were lucky enough to sit down with two cofounders of one of the best local startups, Noelle and Ben Smit from Teamgage.A positive company culture is an undeniable asset for any successful business, but monitoring and tracking corporate culture is hard to do. Step in Teamgage, which offers actionable and elegant workplace analytics in real-time for companies that want to make evidence-based decisions.Husband and wife team Noelle and Ben Smit are passionate about solving this problem with technology and data analytics that helps energise and motivate teams to do their best work.Their solution uses a unique 20 second interface and machine learning to help organisations embed a culture of continuous improvement. It allows employees to make evidence-based decisions, and creates an environment in which everyone can do their best work.Teamgage was part of the Adelaide Techstars 2017 cohort and is already being used by some major organisations like Microsoft, BOQ, Santos, and CSIRO. Noelle and Ben are looking toward a global market – concentrating initially on the Asia Pacific and the USA.This isn't their first venture together first was Code360 and UniOne, a student activity software management tool for universities. UniOne is now used by 13 universities across Australia, and Ben and Noelle have both been working full time in the business since 2010.This was a great conversation about the importance of defining your company purpose, how culture helps create high performing businesses, and how to price your product. While Teamgage have global ambitions, Ben and Noelle want to continue to grow the business from Adelaide.

This week on the pod we're turning our focus to the importance of founder health and wellbeing.We invited Aaron Birkby, CEO Startup Catalyst and Co-founder of Peak Persona, and welcomed back Amanda Price Head of High Growth Ventures to the pod discuss this topic.KPMG Australia’s High Growth Ventures just released the findings from their Startup Founder Survey, supported by Blackbird Ventures, AirTree Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Reinventure and Right Click Capital, which polled founders of 70 Australian venture-backed startups.The report validates a lot of assumptions about startup founders; they work longer hours than average workers, two-third are very or extremely stressed, and 57 percent said that their stress has a large impact on the ability of their startup to succeed. Amanda explains they commissioned the research to shine a spotlight on some of the “unspoken challenges” founders face and highlight the link between founder wellbeing and business performance.Read the full report: //home.kpmg.com/au/en/home/insights/2018/08/startup-founder-research-2018.htmlOur main guest this week isAaron Birkby. His CV and list of accomplishments is extensive; founder entrepreneur, management consultant, television presenter, spy, restaurateur, mentor, advisor, board member, as well as being a leading voice on founder performance.As CEO of Startup Catalyst, Aaron leads missions to Silicon Valley, Europe, Israel and Asia for youths, founders, investors and innovation leaders. To date they’ve completed 14 missions, with over 200 alumni, and each mission is tailored for participates to meet tech giants, high-growth startups, local investors, corporate innovators, accelerators, incubators, and co-working spaces.Last year Aaron launched Peak Persona which delivers programs and content to assist founders to optimise their lives for peak personal performance. The program introduces participants to routines and tools to achieve peak mental performance, manage stress and emotions, find work/life balance, and generally perform at your best in all aspects of your life.This episode explores the importance of founder health, why we should all be talking about it, along with advice on how founders can maintain high performance and avoid burnout. Enjoy and let’s keep the conversation going.

This week on the pod we're discussing the role of Government in helping to build sustained tech ecosystems with Dr Kate Cornick, CEO of LaunchVic.LaunchVic is an independent agency established by the Victorian Government with a $60M fund to support and grow the state's startup ecosystem, increase investment and create jobs.Rather than investing in startups directly, they've made over 50 investments through grand funding rounds to support accelerators, education programs, mentoring and startup events that directly help entrepreneurs.And it's working, there have been over 510 investment deals in Victoria across the last 10 years in tech startups, there are over 107 different coworking spaces across the region, and with 1 in 5 startups in the Health space, they want to make Victoria known as the global HeathTech hub.But there is still work to be done, Kate discusses fixing the 457 visa, the skills gap within Product, product management, product design, the need for more later stage investment (Series A +), and how we need to see more founders investing in foundersIt was great to sit down with Kate who is deeply passionate about the role of innovation in our economy and society more broadly, and her considerable experience in technology innovation across startups, academia, corporates and government is helping LaunchVic to have such a profound impact on the thriving Victorian ecosystem.Be sure to check out LaunchVic's Yeah/Nah festival o n 24th August http://yeahnah.melbourne/Applications are open for our own LaunchVic backed education program, Pathways to Investment: http://bit.ly/IBpathways2And for more information about the great work LaunchVic visit https://launchvic.org/

This week we open the pod bay doors with Jane Lu, founder & CEO of Showpo, an Australian online fashion retailer.Jane is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story. The only child of Chinese immigrants she moved to Australia when she was 8 years old. Like many immigrant families, her parents provided her with every encouragement and opportunity to be a success in her now native Australia. She aced her HSC's with a 99.5% ATAR and went on to what many would see as a dream career with KPMG and Ernst & Young. However this path was a little dull for intrepid entrepreneur Jane, so after returning from travel abroad, decided to sacrifice everything to venture into the fashion retail industry.Most entrepreneurs have their fair share of setbacks and challenges on their way to a successful outcome.Jane was no different with her Showpo story. The setbacks kept her motivated and she preserved to build a brilliant business that she owns 100% of, has never taken a dime of outside investment, that is well on track to $100 million in revenue by 2020! Incredible!As if she wasn't busy enough running Showpo, Jane started Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine with Gen George, a business group bringing women together to share their challenges and celebrate the wins. They have over 78,000 members and have run events in over 25 cities. Jane is extremely passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and women in business.Jane really is a shining example of a great entrepreneur - an honest hustler with a big heart.

James Cuda is the CEO and Founder of Savage Interactive. Based in Hobart Tasmania, Savage Interactive, http://savage.si/ is the creator of the number one creativity app for ipad globally, Procreate. James started life as an artist in Sydney, taught himself multimedia design, started a consulting firm, which he shut down to focus 100% on building Procreate. His vision and passion was to build the best creativity tool in the world. He works as the CEO & Founder and also Head of Product. Procreate has won an Apple Design Award (one of only a very few Aussie companies to have achieved this), which saw him being flown over to Apple in CA. He is now a frequent visitor to the Apple campus in Cupertino. James started the company in Hobart and now has over 20 people based in the Hobart HQ. He has resisted the pressure of hiring people outside of Hobart, as he believes that proximity is important to building a strong working culture. The app is exclusive to the ipad, which is now being used by professional artists around the world. Customers include companies like Pixar and Netflix. He has never raised external funding, and has grown the whole company organically. The company is run by James and his wife and his first engineering hire. James believes strongly in a a results orientated working culture, he provides the team with the autonomy and a very collaborative working environment. Understanding the pressures of growing a small business, he also is a strong believer in rewards and takes the entire company and their families once a year to a retreat on Richard Branson's island in the Caribbean. Which is a long way from Hobart!James has a vision for the business that is driven by a passion for art and a desire to build something better than anything else. This comes across clearly in the podcast, James is driven by a very strong desire to build something truly exceptional.The company is now looking at a range of product enhancements, as it continually finds ways in which to better the app.

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors we chat to Sam Wong, Partner at Blackbird Ventures, an Australian venture fund who back exceptional founders with big ambitions to build global businesses. They provide equity capital for Seed, Series A and later stage - no cheque is too early. With a portfolio of over 40 companies, Blackbird has backed some of Australia’s startup powerhouses like Canva, Safety Culture, BugCrowd, Culture Amp.

Sam and her parents emigrated to Perth from the UK in the 1980s, shortly after her mum started a computer sales business, and it wasn’t long until Sam and her dad were helping to run the business. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents instilled a drive and ambition in Sam from an early age.Sam went on to study law, this led to a summer clerkship and a graduate offer at top law firm. Sam loved the learning and analytical framework, however wanted to work on side projects (including learning French), and lawyer hours allowed no time to focus on these.One of these side projects was SurfStitch, a surf e-commerce company, so Sam left corporate world to help with their SEO and email marketing. A year later, she was in France hiring the team to run SurfStitch’s European operations - putting the French she’d learned to good use.After SurfStitch Sam knew she wanted to start her own thing, so she thought about a problem she faced working as a lawyer, working fewer hours, and CapacityHQ, an on-demand marketplace for legal talent was born. They were part of the Startmate cohort in 2015, the program accelerated their learning, and about halfway through realised they could build a small business but it wouldn’t meet their ambition.At the end of Startmate and after selling CapacityHQ, Sam became the first employee of the Blackbird team as Head of Operations, two years later Sam became a Partner.Blackbird is on its third fund of $250 million ($100M for new investments and $150M for follow on). They are focused on investing earlier and writing smaller cheques to back founders all along their journey. Outside the portfolio, Blackbird has been leading the charge adding value to the wider ecosystem with community initiatives like the Sunrise event, robotics clubs in universities and schools, and the partners regularly writing blog posts. Sam has seen all sides of business, raised by entrepreneurs, working as a lawyer, a startup employee, founding her own business, and now an investor. In this episode she shares lots of her experiences and lesson learned along the way. Enjoy.

Episode 41 of the pod we’re happy to be joined by Dean Dorrell, Principal at boutique venture fund, Carthona Capital.

Carthona is an Australian venture fund focused on early stage investments (pre-Seed, Seed, Series A), with a mandate to invest globally. Established in 2013, when the founding team who were already making separate angel investments came together to pool money, networks to create a syndicated group.

Carthona’s investment strategy is thematic - meaning they do a lot of thinking internally about where the world is heading and how technology will affect it, identify trends and themes and then go out to look for those opportunities. The current fund is $100 million to be deployed over 3 years.

Dean started his career in investment banking, combining his computer skills along with finance and quant strategies (complex mathematical models to detect investment opportunities). After 11 years Dean left the investment banking world, worked briefly for a hedge fund, then invested in his previous colleague, Simon Franks, new digital rights business, Red Bus. They both understood the film business having invested in a number of British films, including Bend It Like Beckham. This led to the creation of hugely popular DVD delivery service,LoveFilm (UK version of Netflix). They raised $20 million, grew the business which was eventually bought by Amazon in 2011.

Dean, a Brit, born in Essex (the outskirts of London) has played team sports all his life and believes many attributes help when running a business; organisation, structure and resilience, the ability to open your mind to doing more than you thought you were capable of. At Carthona Dean encourages the founders they work with to get coached, to be open to new ways of thinking and organisation.

Dean has had a fascinating career and this is a great conversation covering the deployment of super funds into venture, how to manage a portfolio as you make more investments, the role of risk for investors and entrepreneurs, and the parallels between sports and startups. Another fantastic VC doing great work to support ecosystem.

This podcast is all about sharing the stories of the people making a difference to the Australian ecosystem. Few do more to champion and impact #startupaus then this week’s guest, Annie Parker.

A coach, mentor and leader in the Australian startup community, Annie is passionate about helping founders achieve their full potential. She believes in the importance diversity, inclusion, and of paying everything forward!

Annie has been delivering great results for 15 years in roles spanning digital, startup, technology & consulting. Having started her career as a management consultant back in the UK, she was quickly drawn to the world of startups and helped to set up one of world's first corporate accelerators with Telefonica's Wayra program.

5 years ago she was seduced by Australia and decided to focus her energies on the local startup ecosystem, where she came to cofound Telstra’s accelerator program, Muru-D. Known for its investment and support of early stage startups, Annie and the team designed a program to give startups dedicated office space, fantastic acceleration services, and access to the experience and networking capability that Telstra can offer. The program has helped over a 115 startups and operates programs across Australia and Singapore.

One of Annie’s biggest passions is Code Club Australia. In 2014, Annie realised that there was dirth of coders in the country and almost every founder had to outsource one of the most important role in the company. She took upon herself to solve this problem and founded Code Club Australia, a nationwide network of free volunteer-led after-school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. They have over 2000 clubs across Australia and over 175,000 children have learned the basics of coding, problem solving, collaboration, creativity and think like entrepreneurs.

Last year Annie took over the helm as Interim CEO of Fishburners, Australia's first tech startup co-working space, helping thousands of companies start up their businesses since launching in 2011.

Her devotion towards Australian Startup ecosystem caught the eye of Microsoft and Annie has just been appointed as the Global Head of Startups for Microsoft. The Microsoft Accelerator works with 647 companies globally which have raised $US3 billion in funding, and will soon be bringing their Scale Up program to Sydney, to help companies scale and make a global impact.

This is a wonderful conversation between Ian and Annie where they look back at some of the amazing work Annie has done for #startupaus and peek into the next big problems she’ll be taking on. Go Annie!

On this week’s episode, we're delighted to welcome Emma Lo Russo, founder & CEO of Digivizer, one of Australia’s leading social web analytics technology company.

Emma has been working in leadership positions since the age of 19 when she left an advertising agency to start in the marketing team at Macquarie Bank. She was soon labelled the ‘next big thing’. Numerous leadership roles led Emma to become President & Chief Operating Officer of Altium, an ASX-listed software company where she oversaw it's greatest period of organic sales growth. It was here Emma began to see the potential and power of data.

In 2010, Emma founded Digivizer, a technology platform where big data, social media and CRM converge to help organisations generate value from real-time data and actionable insights. For the first 5 years, Emma bootstrapped Digivizer building it's enterprise client list, before going on to raise $2 million in a very unusual way off the back of her MBA strategy document. The Digivizer team is now up to 63 employees with an impressive list of enterprise and startup clients and a continue evolve the platform and create more products to add value to their customers.

Emma believes that data drives everything, so recently founded GoTo Game after seeing the huge growth and stickiness of gaming and eSports. GoTo Gaming is a media hub, run by gamers for gamers, designed to connect great content, events, activations, competitions and influencers within the one ecosystem.Ian and Emma cover a range of topics from the recent controversy around online privacy and use of customer data, to the risk of starting your own business, the perception versus reality of being a founder, and the many challenges of scaling a business.If you’re a founder you can learn a lot from this episode. Emma is incredibly smart, driven, and an outstanding Australian entrepreneur who is committed to helping others unlock their full potential. We hope you enjoy!

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors, we turn our attention to the New Zealand startup ecosystem as Ian Gardiner speaks with kiwi native, serial entrepreneur and investor, Rowan Simpson.

Rowan started his career as an IT consultant working on mainly Government projects in Sydney. A software engineer at heart, Rowan began tinkering with web tools and developed his first startup FlatHunt to help people finding flatmates. After burning through all his cash, Rowan returned to NZ where he was hired by TradeMe and became the third founding member of the team.

Rowan talks about their David and goliath experience when TradeMe took on eBay and became the dominate the e-commerce platform in New Zealand (one of only a few markets eBay did not succeed in). TradeMe went on to become an iconic Kiwi brand and was acquired by Fairfax for $750m.
After the sale of TradeMe, Rowan was involved in the early days of the great New Zealand unicorn, Xero. Shortly after the IPO Rowan moved on and led the investment in another great kiwi company, Vend, a retail management software that lets retailers run their business in-store, online, and via mobile.

His current role is Chair at Hoku Group, his family office where Rowan combines private investments into early-stage technology ventures and a non-profit foundation. He continues to work closely as both an investor, director and advisor with the next wave of technology businesses they have invested in, including Timely, Atomic, Melodics and Thematic.

Rowan and Ian discuss Rowan’s investment thesis, what great founders look like, and exchange notes on difference between the Australia & NZ ecosystems.

Rowan is a great thinker, backing some incredible startups and a huge ambassador for New Zealand. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed chatting to Rowan.

This week on the pod Phaedon Stough was lucky enough to talk with Steve Killelea; accomplished entrepreneur, business magnate, one of Australia’s most prolific philanthropists and founder of a global think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.

You may never have heard of Steve, he's one of those quiet over-achievers, who has spent most of his business life working under the radar, yet has successfully built two software companies which he founded and turned into highly successful global businesses, as well as being Australia's largest donor foreign aid.

Steve founded Integrated Research Ltd (IR), an Australian publicly-listed company with a 25-year heritage of providing performance management and payments software for business-critical computing. Through Steve’s direction as CEO and now as Chairman, IR has built an impressive, world-class customer base to make it one of Australia’s leading software companies. IR listed on the ASX and it's current market cap is $664 million of which Steve retains about 40% of the company.

Steve has always had a strong passion for sustainable development, and in 2000 established The Charitable Foundation (TCF), one of the largest private overseas aid organisations in Australia. It aims to provide life-changing interventions reaching as many people as possible with special emphasis on targeting the poorest of the poor. TCF has substantially impacted the lives of over 2.3 million people.

In 2007 Steve founded the international think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), dedicated to building a greater understanding of the interconnection between business, peace and economics with particular emphasis on the economic benefits of peace. IEP’s ground-breaking research includes the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of peacefulness. Steve’s founding of IEP was recognized as one of the 50 most impactful philanthropic gifts in Australia’s history.

Steve currently serves on a number of influential Company Boards, Advisory Boards and President Councils. In 2010 he was honoured as Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the global peace movement.

It really was a pleasure to speak with one Australia's great entrepreneurs and a man who's made it his life's work to make the world and better more peaceful place. We hope you're inspired by Steve's story as much as we were.

This week on pod, we talk everything blockchain and cryptocurrency with Australia’s leading thinkers on the subject, George Samman.

A blockchain consultant/advisor, George Samman has co-founded and worked with numerous startups in the bitcoin and blockchain space since 2013. George strongly believes that blockchain and financial technologies are here to change how business is done across every industry.

George co-founded Magnr in 2013, a bitcoin trading platform, and Sammantics where he blogs about blockchain technology and use cases. He’s constantly researching the technology in great depth in order to explain its potential to institutions of all shapes and sizes. He recently co-authored a seminal report on blockchain architecture with KPMG.

George Samman is an entrepreneur in Residence for blockchain and cryptocurrency at Startupbootcamp, Tyro Fintech Hub, and has also advised startups such as Agridigital, Lightstreams, Investfeed, Gazecoin and Hedera Hashgraph.

So turn up the volume and dive into the crypto world!

On this episode of the pod, we open the doors with the brilliant thinker, Jost Stollmann.German-Australian Jost has lived many lives as a Founder, Consultant, Corporate Executive, Politican, Adventurer, Investor, CEO and Student.Jost recently stepped down as the Chairman of Tyro Payments, one of Australia's most successful fintech institutions specialising in merchant credit , debit, and EFTPOS. From 2004 to 2016 Jost was Tyro's CEO where he lead them through multiple rounds of investment totally $103M, the process of gaining a banking license, and exponential growth that has seen Tyro serve over 20,000 customers and fascinated $42.2 billion in transactions.Previous roles include President of GE Capital Information Technology Europe, Fonder and Chairman of CompuNet, which he started at 29 and sold 12 years later to GE for over $1B, and consultant at BCG for 3 years.Jost's political career saw him as the Shadow Minster of Economy and Technology in Germany under Gerhard Schroder's, Social Democratic Party.A life long learner, Jost has a Law Degree, Dipolma in Political Science, MBA from Harvard, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is currently a studying the Greek language.This is a fascinating, thought provoking conversation, as we look back at Jost's career, his journey to Australia and discuss how he believes we're all born entrepreneurs. Enjoy!

This week on the pod, we have one of Australia’s most creative and well respected research commercialisation specialists. Dr. Steve Brodie talking everything innovation.

Steve is passionate about all things science. Steve brings more than 20 years’ experience in research and development, commercialisation and open innovation with stints at major universities and now working with CSIRO.

In his current role as Executive Manager for Innovation with CSIRO, Steve leads a fantastic team who design and delivery of innovation programs, including the ON program, Australia's innovation accelerator open to all Australian universities, publicly funded research agencies and CSIRO. The program is designed to support and guide academia and research teams into viable, commercial businesses.

On 9th April 2018 Innovation Bay will host the Deep Tech Founder Dinner that will feature teams from ON accelerator program.

A curious inventor by trade, Steve co-founded ‘Thinking Thingamabob’, designed to solely help people be more creative. Prior to relocating to Australia Steve worked in space-tech and development of sensors for rockets and jets with Ferroperm Piezoceramics in Denmark.

It’s a really fun conversation we hope you enjoy!

We welcome to the pod entrepreneur, investor, mentor and startup evangelist, Alan Jones.With a career spanning over 50 roles; from working for some of largest tech companies in the world, to mentoring with Australia’s leading tech incubators and accelerators, to investing in an amazing portfolio of early stage tech startups. Few people have impacted the local tech ecosystem like Alan.Alan's career started in PR and content, before founding his first business in 1995, and going on to help tech giants like Microsoft and Yahoo! in Australia. With a wealth of experience founding and co-founding web and mobile startups, Alan went on to advise and invest in Australian startups through BlueChilli, Blackbird Ventures, Startmate, Catalysr, and Pollenizer Ventures. He recently became entrepreneur-in-residence for our sponsor KPMG High Growth Ventures, working with growth-stage tech startups as they scale.He's also in the process of raising a new fund, M8 Ventures, which will focus on backing great product teams building the next generation of global tech companies from Australia and New Zealand.Phaedon sat down with Alan to discuss his career, what's changed in the startup industry, lessons learned along the way, what makes a good mentor, how he's advocating for a culture of entrepreneurship, the challenges the industry still faces, and his approach to investing and backing great companies.This episode is jam-packed with honest reflection, advice and insights. Enjoy!

Larry Lopez has been driving innovation for over 25 years. He has worked with start-ups, venture capital funds, institutional investors and government agencies, with a long track record of developing outstanding teams that deliver successful outcomes.Larry spent 17 years in technology finance with Silicon Valley Bank, before moving to Australia in 2006. His current role as Director of Accelerating Commercialisation for the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science sees him offering support and opportunities to help Australian entrepreneurs, researchers and SME businesses to address the challenges associated with commercialising intellectual property.We caught up with Larry at last year's West Tech festival in Perth.

After a little break we're back and ready to open the pod bay doors again.To kick off the year we thought we'd let our co-founders, Ian Gardiner and Phaedon Stough interview one another. This year Innovation Bay celebrates 15 years of supporting Australian founders and the startup ecosystem. It's been quite a ride from those initial gatherings of a few people in a dingy bar to a national community of over 3000 members spread across Australia.In case you don't know much about them, Ian Gardiner has a day job with Amazon Web Services, helping startups across Australia and New Zealand. Previously Ian was the CEO and founder of Viocorp, a software company supplying a video publishing platform for corporates and government. In 2009 Ian won the NSW Pearcey award for Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.Phaedon Stough, has worked with entrepreneurs and high growth tech start-up across APAC, EMEA and NA. Founding Mitchellake in 2001 to help entrepreneurs scale their companies via human capital solutions. Phaedon was the on board of Australia's first incubator, Pollenizer and later co-founded The Australian Founders Network in San Francisco to help Aussie entrepreneurs living overseas collaborate and support each other.Quite a dynamic duo we think you'll agree. Buckle up as these two 'veterans' cover everything from Innovation Bay's humble beginnings, their own personal journey's as startup founders, reflect on the changes in the Australian ecosystem over the past 15 years, share thoughts on the work that still needs to be done, and announce lots of new initiatives coming 2018.

Vanessa is the founder and CEO of Storreduce, an Australian deep-tech startup playing in the storage area. She moved the business to Silicon Valley a couple of years ago to be closer to her market. I caught up with her on a pretty noisy exhibition floor at AWS's re:Invent customer event in Vegas.

I caught up with Peter Nichol, the CEO of Instaclustr in Las Vegas during AWS's re:Invent conference. Instaclustr is a Canberra-based software business offering managed solutions for Cassandra and other products. Might sound complicated and niche, but it's an amazing business on an amazing fast-growth trajectory. Peter is a terrific guy with a clear vision for how he wants to scale Instaclustr.

Jeremy Kwong-Law manages Grok Ventures, which is Mike Cannon-Brookes's family office fund. Jeremy has a law degree from Sydney Uni, a stint at Macquarie bank as well as a foray into running his own startup a few years ago. This a fascinating story about how Jeremy got into venture, what a family office fund like this looks like, what their investment focus is.

Dr Michelle Perugini is an academic, entrepreneur, and an internationally renowned expert in health, medical research, advanced analytics, and cognitive AI. Her business, Life Whsiperer uses AI, computer vision and machine learning to better select healthy embryos for IVF, and ultimately improve outcomes for couples wanting to have children.
Success rates for IVF are low, placing unnecessary financial and emotional burden on couples. Selecting the right embryo during IVF treatment is critical to ensuring a successful outcome. However, embryo selection is typically a manual and imprecise process. Life Whisperer's goal is to improve IVF success rates, and reduce cost and emotional burden on couples by selecting the best embryos.

Slight change in format this week. Ian is off in Hawaii cycling up a volcano, so has handed the microphone over to his Innovation Bay co-founder Phaedon Stough.
He caught up with Patrick Llewellyn, the CEO of Accel-backed Aussie startup success story 99Designs.
99Designs is one of the world's largest graphic design marketplaces. There are few who have executed such rapid global growth as successfully as Patrick.To date, 99designs has hosted more than 245,000 graphic design contests and paid out more than $60 million to its community of 250,000 designers around the world.

Katherine is the founder and CEO of Brighte, a Sydney-based fintech startup. Its proposition is to lend to households looking to buy big-ticket items like solar panels, batteries, air conditioners, etc. A former Macquarie banker, she launched the business in late 2016. She has shown incredible traction and progress, having recently landed $3.5m in seed funding, including from Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian's co-CEO).

Bill has had a long career in the startup and venture space. He was a co-founder at Blackbird Ventures (with Niki Scevak and Rick Baker). He has a huge passion for #DeepTechFounders and has now recently launched Main Sequence Ventures along with Phil Morle, Mike Zimmermann, Martin Duursma and Mike Nicholls. It's a $100m fund part funded by CSIRO and part funded by the federal goverment.Bill proved his geek chops and street cred by nominating Rick & Morty as his favourite TV show. Love it.

Al is one of the new generation of Aussie VCs. Tempus Partners was formed after his successful exit from ShippingEasy. He's now launched a $40m fund investing in the best early stage and Series A opportunities. It's an awesome story and great to hear the insights from one of the best "emerging" VCs in Australia.

Alison brings some unique insights to the podcast this week. She's done just about everything from early stage startups to a stint as a VC and now as a Director of Westpac and Cochlear (amongst other things!) She's an amazing thinker and problem solver. I enjoy all my interviews, but this is definitely up there as one of my favourites.

Dan Cohen is an Australian serial entrepreneur. He successfully built and sold his first business Park Assist after a 10 year journey. In 2015 he co-founded Flare, a business redefining the employer-employee relationship. Has raised almost $10m locally, mostly from local VC Reinventure. I've known Dan for years now and he is one of my favourite entrepreneurs. He seems to combine the essential entrepreneurial traits of tenacity, ambition and arrogance but with healthy dollops of humility. There are some extremely valuable insights in this interview.

I know you shouldn't have favourite children, or, I suppose, favourite startup CEOs. But Luke is definitely one of my favourite CEOs.
Luke's story, and by extension the story of SafetyCulture is fascinating - the epitome of startup hustle. It was so inspiring that Luke produced and paid for a movie about it (along with his buddies from Canva and Vinomofo). It's appropriately called "The New Hustle" - if you haven't seen it check it out - you'll find it on YouTube.

Jason is a prinipal at Partners for Growth (PFG), a specialty lending company from Silicon Valley with an active presence in Australia. When it comes to financing high-growth companies, we tend to focus on equity deals - ie sell a percentage of your company shares to an investor. Debt is an instrument that is much less common. Why is this? Jason has a great story to tell. Listen in and find out how he went from a Phd in Ancient History from Oxford University via a few years with Silicon Valley Bank in San Francisco to PFG's man on the ground in Australia. And what exactly is venture debt?

We took the "studio" on the road with us to Hobart in Tasmania. Caught up James MacGregor, the founder and CEO of video animation startup Biteable.
James is an outstanding entrepreneur demonstrating leadership, strong engineering, effective marketing, and tons of commercial hustle. Plus of course the essential ingredient - oodles of tenacity. Biteable is less than 4 years old and from its HQ in Hobart has build a worldwide user base of over 2 million customers. His story is a great one, and it feels like he is only just getting started!I didn't have my usual microphones with me for this episode, so not quite the richness of our usual productions.

Amanda Price is the head of KPMG's High Growth Ventures team. Their aim is to help founders build successful startups by helping them with access to capital, customers and international connections.She returned from almost 10 years in Los Angeles in various startup roles and has been a pillar of the Aussie startup community for over three years now. She's smart and passionate about startups. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Flavia is my favourite rocket scientist. Passionate, driven, intelligent and with unbelievable amounts of tenacity, it seems there is nothing that Flavia can't do if she puts her mind (and talents) to it.Fleet is a space business providing free global satellite connectivity for the internet of things. Over the next few years they will be launching and managing a constellation of up to 100 nano-satellites operating in a low earth orbit and providing ubiquitous connectivity for the tens of billions of internet-connected devices around the world. They just raised $5m from Blackbird and Mike Cannon-Brooke's investment fund, Grok Ventures.Flavia has a great story of how she got to this point. And articulates well the remarkable ambition she still has for the business.

Karen is the CEO of corporate startup accelerator Slingshot. She has spent most of her career in various tech roles, most recently as CEO of News-owned job site Career One. Slingshot has delivered programs for several major Australian corporates over the last 3 years, including NRMA, HCF, Qantas and Lion. It's an interesting model which seems to have carved out a good spot in a relatively competitive market.
Karen and I cover a lot of ground in this (quite long) episode. She's an awesome lady - great fun to talk to with some great insights.

Niki Scevak is the founder of Australian accelerator program Startmate as well as a founding partner at VC Blackbird. He's been passionately involved in the Australian startup sector since 2008 when he returned home from the USA.
Niki has done about as much as anyone I know to support and grow the startup ecosystem. Startmate is on its fifth (or sixth?) cohort. Blackbird has now made almost 40 investments across its two funds. Many of their most recent investments are in what one might call "non-standard" sectors such has self-driving cars and space. Niki is a deep thinker with a keen intellect. And a great guy too.

Nico Chu is a very accomplished senior executive from the global IT corporate ranks. He has held senior global roles with companies like Expedia and Orbitz. His last corporate role was successfully helping to navigate Orbitz through their $1.5bn acquisition by Expedia.
His new venture, Sinorbis, is a software business helping western (well, non-Chinese) companies market themselves into the enormous Chinese market. China has 720m internet users, which is one quarter of the world's internet population. Broadly speaking they love western goods and services. However it's very difficult for those brands to get their message delivered behind the Great Chinese Firewall in a way that resonates. Sinorbis has built software and associated services that is helping with this.
Nico has a great story. And is a shining example of someone coming from the corporate world to make a significant splash in the startup world. (Also, sorry for my Barry White voice - got whacked with a bug just before this was recorded.)

Gen is a remarkable young woman. Smart, driven, humble. She has demonstrated a remarkable ability in her short career so far to (ahem) "get shit done". She cut her teeth in understanding double sided-markets with recruitment marketplace OneShift. This was sold earlier this year to Programmed. Gen and her co-founder/CTO Jess Glenn have now embarked on Tamme, a service for micro-targeting both sides of marketplaces, at a hyper-local level. She has also co-founded (with Jane Lu from Showpo) "Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine" which now has 46,000+ female members around the world who enjoy wine and business. We discussed this and more. Jump in and enjoy...

Rob is the CEO and founder of podcasting platform Whooshkaa. An accountant by background, Rob was formerly the CEO at Macquarie Radio Network before he left and threw himself into the startup world with Whooshkaa a couple of years ago. Whooshkaa as well as being the publishing platform for Open the Pod Bay Doors is also one of the best startups in Australia right now. Commercially and technically it is doing an amazing job. Rob is intelligent, focused, talented and super-humble.

Jennifer Tejada is the CEO of Pagerduty, a company that provides (I'm quoting from their web site) - "full-stack visibility and actionable insights for better software and better customer experiences. " It might sound niche, but this is a huge and growing area, especially with the way software is currently being developed, deployed and managed. Just 7 years old and a graduate of Y-Combinator, Pagerduty has raised over US$80m from investors including Accel, Bessemer and Andreessen Horowitz. It has over 9,000 clients globally and around 330 staff.Pagerduty just launched in Australia and Jennifer was in town to get things kicked off. She has a strong link to Australia (Bondi in particular) having married an Aussie through their love of ocean-yacht-racing. She spent 10 years or so in Australia before heading back to San Francisco and eventually ending up at Pagerduty in 2016. She's a remarkable woman with a huge wealth of experiences and insights. One of my favourite guests so far. Enjoy.

We held an Innovation Bay event in Melbourne recently where we hosted Partners from three of the country's best VCs (Airtree, Reinventure and Squarepeg). Between them they represent almost $750m of Venture Capital and have made around 60 investments between them. Fascinating discussion covering the background of Australia's VC sector, where it has got to now, some of the upcoming trends and what the future holds.

Terry Gold is the Managing Directors of Techstars in Adelaide. I don't think he would mind being described as a "veteran" of this industry, having founded, run, sold, mentored many many companies over his "several" years in the sector.Terry was an awesome interview subject. Smart, caring, passionate. We discussed his background in the US, how he ended up as a core member of the early Boulder, Colorado tech community and how he eventually landed up in this amazing job in the up-and-coming tech colossus of Adelaide. Who is in the program, how it's structured, and what he expects from it. Enjoy.

On Thursday 13 July 2017, Jobs NSW announced the creation of the "Sydney Startup Hub", a new, 17,000 sq m space dedicated to housing, and nurturing, much of Sydney's startup community. Anchor tenants of Fishburners, Tankstream, Stone & Chalk and The Studio. Scheduled to open later in 2017. David Thodey is the Chairman of Jobs NSW and managed to squeeze in this special episode of the podcast straight after the announcement. David was CEO at Telstra from 2009 to 2015. Under his tenure Telstra's market cap doubled and, according to Crikey, "not only restored its tattered reputation but improved it."
He is currently Chair of CSIRO and JobsNSW, and has a wealth of experience as a technology industry executive.

Slightly different episode format this week. This was recorded at an Innovation Bay event in Sydney, so we had the fun of recording at a live event in front of a studio audience. Please forgive the audio challenges around the Q&A section. Apart from a mis-joke about Paul growing up in Liverpool (he didn't, but I actually thought he was serious when he said he did!) this is a great and fascinating chat with Paul.Paul has over a decade experience in investment, venture capital and startups. He started at Goldman Sachs before becoming the Investment Manager for the $400m Tulla Family Office. For the past 2.5 years, Paul has been a Venture Partner at AirTree Ventures, a $250M Venture Fund.
Today, he's building Spaceship, a tech-focused Super Fund offering a diversified portfolio with tech at its core, built for those with long investment horizons. Spaceship is looking to completely change the future of Superannuation for young Australians.

Based in Western Sydney, Ed Husic was elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Chifley in 2010. Currently in his third term, he was re-elected to Parliament in 2016.Before entering Parliament, he held a number of roles within the public and private sector including National President of the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union. Prior to this he was employed with Integral Energy (now Endeavour Energy); a major national energy retailer and NSW based electricity distributor.We managed to keep the discussion as non-political and partisan as we possibly could. And remarkably didn't even mention Donald Trump once.

Over the course of Paul's career he has built and sold four previous companies and has then become an active consultant and non-executive director of some major companies like Trade Me and iiNet. In 2014, Paul McCarney and Danny Gilligan (one of the founders of VC Reinventure) founded Data Republic with a mission to change the way organisations exchange data - to make it safer, more secure and more scalable.This is a complicated area, which we cover in some detail.

Elaine is Head of Venture Capital at Blue Sky and is responsible for the management of the Blue Sky venture capital fund and portfolio. Established in 2012, her division has over $100 million in assets under management across a broad range of industry sectors. Amongst her notable investments was a $25m injection into Vinomofo in April 2016.Elaine is a proud Brisbane native and a huge champion of Queensland's startup sector. She has a strong academic foundation holding a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Adelaide. She is actively involved in Australia’s professional venture capital community, as a member of AVCALs venture capital stakeholder committee and as a member of the investment committee of ANUConnect Venture Capital, the Australian National University’s venture capital fund.I took the podcast studio on the road with me and visited Elaine's Brisbane office for this awesome and insightful chat.

The sharp-eyed amongst my listeners will have noted the reference to "2001 - A Space Odyssey" in the title of this podcast. Whilst certainly no HAL 9000, Andrea Boyd is one of the controllers of the International Space Station, albeit from the relative comfort and safety of Cologne, Germany, Planet Earth.Andrea was visiting Australia to help lobby for the establishment of an Australian Space Agency (plus some other things). I managed to catch up with her and her busy schedule to hear how a girl from Adelaide has made it so far in the Space Industry. And what we might expect in the future from Australia's nascent Space Sector.

Daniel is one of the most successful Venture Capitalists in Australia. He is a founder of Airtree Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital company. Prior to Airtree Ventures he was the Founding Chairman of netus (a technology investment company acquired by Fairfax Media in 2013) and prior to this role he founded Australia's largest internet investment company, ecorp. The returns to investors from all of these funds were nothing short of extraordinary - eg Netus invested in and exited nine companies over a six-year period, delivering a 4x cash-on-cash return to investors. Prior to that he held several senior executive roles with Microsoft, including reporting to Bill Gates and running the APAC region for Microsoft. He was recently appointed to the federal government's "Innovation and Science Australia" Board. He is a noted and vocal philanthropist, and currently serves on the Sydney Theatre Company Board and the advisory boards for the UNSW Australia Business School and the University of Sydney Medical School. He is also an adjunct professor at the Business School of the University of Sydney and the Business School of UNSW Australia.Daniel is incredibly smart and articulate. And he has been known to be quite opinionated. He's also a remarkable predictor of the future. Delighted that Daniel was my first guest. Enjoy and please let me know your feedback.